Nvidia Patent Grants

PCIe traffic tracking hardware in a unified virtual memory system

Granted: December 28, 2021
Patent Number: 11210253
Techniques are disclosed for tracking memory page accesses in a unified virtual memory system. An access tracking unit detects a memory page access generated by a first processor for accessing a memory page in a memory system of a second processor. The access tracking unit determines whether a cache memory includes an entry for the memory page. If so, then the access tracking unit increments an associated access counter. Otherwise, the access tracking unit attempts to find an unused…

Encoding lidar scanned data for generating high definition maps for autonomous vehicles

Granted: December 28, 2021
Patent Number: 11209548
Embodiments relate to methods for efficiently encoding sensor data captured by an autonomous vehicle and building a high definition map using the encoded sensor data. The sensor data can be LiDAR data which is expressed as multiple image representations. Image representations that include important LiDAR data undergo a lossless compression while image representations that include LiDAR data that is more error-tolerant undergo a lossy compression. Therefore, the compressed sensor data can…

Determining associations between objects and persons using machine learning models

Granted: December 21, 2021
Patent Number: 11205086
In various examples, sensor data—such as masked sensor data—may be used as input to a machine learning model to determine a confidence for object to person associations. The masked sensor data may focus the machine learning model on particular regions of the image that correspond to persons, objects, or some combination thereof. In some embodiments, coordinates corresponding to persons, objects, or combinations thereof, in addition to area ratios between various regions of the image…

Leveraging low power states for fault testing of processing cores at runtime

Granted: December 21, 2021
Patent Number: 11204849
In various examples, one or more components or regions of a processing unit—such as a processing core, and/or component thereof—may be tested for faults during deployment in the field. To perform testing while in deployment, the state of a component subject to test may be retrieved and/or stored during the test to maintain state integrity, the component may be clamped to communicatively isolate the component from other components of the processing unit, a test vector may be applied…

Method for continued bounding volume hierarchy traversal on intersection without shader intervention

Granted: December 14, 2021
Patent Number: 11200725
A hardware-based traversal coprocessor provides acceleration of tree traversal operations searching for intersections between primitives represented in a tree data structure and a ray. The primitives may include opaque and alpha triangles used in generating a virtual scene. The hardware-based traversal coprocessor is configured to determine primitives intersected by the ray, and return intersection information to a streaming multiprocessor for further processing. The hardware-based…

Using a computer to model the reactions of objects to simulated physical interactions

Granted: December 14, 2021
Patent Number: 11200356
In modeling contact between two or more objects (such as a robotic arm placing a block on a stack of blocks) or articulations of a series of linked joints (such as modeling a backhoe), current techniques can introduce additional energy into the system or fail to resolve a constraint imposed on the system. The current techniques attempt to resolve these issues, for example, by using very small time steps. Very small time steps, however, can significantly increase computational costs of…

Object detection using skewed polygons suitable for parking space detection

Granted: December 7, 2021
Patent Number: 11195331
A neural network may be used to determine corner points of a skewed polygon (e.g., as displacement values to anchor box corner points) that accurately delineate a region in an image that defines a parking space. Further, the neural network may output confidence values predicting likelihoods that corner points of an anchor box correspond to an entrance to the parking spot. The confidence values may be used to select a subset of the corner points of the anchor box and/or skewed polygon in…

Query-specific behavioral modification of tree traversal

Granted: November 30, 2021
Patent Number: 11189075
Methods and systems are described in some examples for changing the traversal of an acceleration data structure in a highly dynamic query-specific manner, with each query specifying test parameters, a test opcode and a mapping of test results to actions. In an example ray tracing implementation, traversal of a bounding volume hierarchy by a ray is performed with the default behavior of the traversal being changed in accordance with results of a test performed using the test opcode and…

Determining diagnostic coverage for memory using redundant execution

Granted: November 30, 2021
Patent Number: 11188442
Memory, used by a computer to store data, is generally prone to faults, including permanent faults (i.e. relating to a lifetime of the memory hardware), and also transient faults (i.e. relating to some external cause) which are otherwise known as soft errors. Since soft errors can change the state of the data in the memory and thus cause errors in applications reading and processing the data, there is a desire to characterize the degree of vulnerability of the memory to soft errors. In…

Data recovery technique for time interleaved receiver in presence of transmitter pulse width distortion

Granted: November 23, 2021
Patent Number: 11184008
This disclosure relates to a receiver that includes a clock and data recovery loop and a phase offset loop. The clock and data recovery loop may be controlled by a sum of gradients for a plurality of data interleaves. The phase offset loop may be controlled by an accumulated differential gradient for each of the data interleaves.

Distance to obstacle detection in autonomous machine applications

Granted: November 23, 2021
Patent Number: 11182916
In various examples, a deep neural network (DNN) is trained to accurately predict, in deployment, distances to objects and obstacles using image data alone. The DNN may be trained with ground truth data that is generated and encoded using sensor data from any number of depth predicting sensors, such as, without limitation, RADAR sensors, LIDAR sensors, and/or SONAR sensors. Camera adaptation algorithms may be used in various embodiments to adapt the DNN for use with image data generated…

Enhanced high-dynamic-range imaging and tone mapping

Granted: November 23, 2021
Patent Number: 11182884
The various embodiments of the present disclosure are directed towards methods for tone mapping High-Dynamic-Range (HDR) image data, as well as controlling the brightness of the image encoded by HDR the image data and/or the tone-mapped image data. HDR image is captured. A tone mapping function for the HDR image data is generated. To generate the tone mapping function, control points are dynamically determined based on an analysis of the HDR image data. The tone mapping function is fit…

Generation of synthetic images for training a neural network model

Granted: November 23, 2021
Patent Number: 11182649
Training deep neural networks requires a large amount of labeled training data. Conventionally, labeled training data is generated by gathering real images that are manually labelled which is very time-consuming. Instead of manually labelling a training dataset, domain randomization technique is used generate training data that is automatically labeled. The generated training data may be used to train neural networks for object detection and segmentation (labelling) tasks. In an…

Smart area monitoring with artificial intelligence

Granted: November 23, 2021
Patent Number: 11182598
The present disclosure provides various approaches for smart area monitoring suitable for parking garages or other areas. These approaches may include ROI-based occupancy detection to determine whether particular parking spots are occupied by leveraging image data from image sensors, such as cameras. These approaches may also include multi-sensor object tracking using multiple sensors that are distributed across an area that leverage both image data and spatial information regarding the…

Techniques for an efficient fabric attached memory

Granted: November 23, 2021
Patent Number: 11182309
Fabric Attached Memory (FAM) provides a pool of memory that can be accessed by one or more processors, such as a graphics processing unit(s) (GPU)(s), over a network fabric. In one instance, a technique is disclosed for using imperfect processors as memory controllers to allow memory, which is local to the imperfect processors, to be accessed by other processors as fabric attached memory. In another instance, memory address compaction is used within the fabric elements to fully utilize…

Pre-fetching task descriptors of dependent tasks

Granted: November 23, 2021
Patent Number: 11182207
Techniques are disclosed for reducing the latency between the completion of a producer task and the launch of a consumer task dependent on the producer task. Such latency exists when the information needed to launch the consumer task is unavailable when the producer task completes. Thus, various techniques are disclosed, where a task management unit initiates the retrieval of the information needed to launch the consumer task from memory in parallel with the producer task being launched.…

Automatic generation of video playback effects

Granted: November 16, 2021
Patent Number: 11176967
In various examples, recordings of gameplay sessions are enhanced by the application of special effects to relatively high(er) and/or low(er) interest durations of the gameplay sessions. Durations of relatively high(er) or low(er) predicted interest in a gameplay session are identified, for instance, based upon level of activity engaged in by a gamer during a particular gameplay session duration. Once identified, different variations of video characteristic(s) are applied to at least a…

Enhanced optical flow estimation using a varied scan order

Granted: November 16, 2021
Patent Number: 11176682
In various examples, optical flow estimate (OFE) quality is improved when employing a hint-based algorithm in multi-level hierarchical motion estimation by using different scan orders at different resolution levels. A scan of an image performed with a scan order may initially leverage OFEs from a previous scan of the image, where the previous scan was performed using a different scan order. The OFEs leveraged from the previous scan are more likely to be of high accuracy until sufficient…

Faster game enablement utilizing virtual machine reuse

Granted: November 9, 2021
Patent Number: 11169858
The disclosure is directed to a method of operating a game system where virtual machines (VM) supporting the game session can be reused by a second user after a first user ends their game session. In another aspect, the VM can be shut down if the number of VMs exceeds a target number of VMs or if an abnormality is detected in the VM. In another aspect, VMs can be instantiated in order to meet a target number of VMs. In another aspect, a software application is disclosed to execute the…

Distance estimation to objects and free-space boundaries in autonomous machine applications

Granted: November 9, 2021
Patent Number: 11170299
In various examples, a deep neural network (DNN) is trained—using image data alone—to accurately predict distances to objects, obstacles, and/or a detected free-space boundary. The DNN may be trained with ground truth data that is generated using sensor data representative of motion of an ego-vehicle and/or sensor data from any number of depth predicting sensors—such as, without limitation, RADAR sensors, LIDAR sensors, and/or SONAR sensors. The DNN may be trained using two or more…