Parallel Fixed-Point Digital Differential Analyser with Antialiasing. PFDDAA.

Abstract

This paper introduces a quick, efficient and simple algorithm for drawing straight lines with antialiasing on discrete devices like printers or CRTs. It is based on the DDA algorithm. It uses 32 bits fixed-point arithmetic. This is a pipelined, parallelized and scalable SIMD version. It may be hardware implemented. It is suitable for MMX or Streaming SIMD Pentium (Pentium is a trade mark from Intel Corporation) III instructions. The algorithm allows drawing true colour lines using a brush 3 pixels high and 1 pixel wide in parallel. The computing cost is very low and only integer arithmetic is used. This algorithm takes into account that the real width of the line remains constant always and it does not depend on its slope. Given that the total radiation emitted by a line is proportional to its real surface, total emitted light also increases with its slope.