Simulation and development environment for mobile 3D graphics architectures

This paper describes a simulation and development environment for designing mobile three-dimensional (3D) graphics architectures. The proposed simulation and verification environment (SVE) uses glTrace's ability to intercept and redirect an OpenGLES streams. The SVE simulates the behaviour of mobile 3D graphics pipeline during the playback of traces and produces the second geometry trace that can be used as a test vector for the Verilog/hardware discription language RT-level model. An architectural verification can be conducted by comparing the frame-by-frame results. The functionality of the SVE is demonstrated by designing a mobile 3D graphics architecture and implementing the verified architecture on field programmable gate array (FPGA) boards. An application development environment (ADE) is also presented that includes a mobile graphics application programming interface and a device driver interface. The proposed SVE and the ADE could be efficiently used for developing and testing mobile applications, architectural analysis and hardware designs.