Flexible frame referencing for display transport

1. A method comprising:

receiving frames at a computer system for transmission to a display;

sending frames to the display without inter-frame compression in an intra-frame mode;

saving the sent frames to a reference frame list;

switching the computer system to an inter-frame mode;

selecting a reference frame from the reference frame list;

compressing additional received frames using the selected reference frame;

improving the reference frame using partial self-refresh updates before compressing; and

sending the additional frames to the display compressed in the inter-frame mode.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising encoding the frames at the computer system using inter-frame compression before sending the additional frames.

3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising monitoring an encoding performance and sending frames in the intra-frame mode when the encoding performance is less than a threshold.

4. The method of claim 2 , wherein the encoding performance is determined by measuring a frame time.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising selecting between the intra-frame mode and the inter-frame mode by determining an amount of a frame that has changed in comparison to a previous frame.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the reference frame is the last frame sent in the intra-frame mode.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein the last sent frame is the first frame in the reference frame list.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein improving comprises:

identifying dirty rectangles of the reference frame;

prioritizing the identified dirty rectangles based on a quality of each dirty rectangle; and

performing the partial self-refresh updates in order of the prioritization constrained by available bandwidth.

9. The method of claim 8 , further comprising discarding self-refresh updates from dirty rectangles with a low prioritization.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the reference frame comprises a prior frame combined with partial self-refresh updates.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein saving the sent frames comprises saving a frame and saving partial self-refresh updates of subsequent frames to the saved frame.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein saving the sent frames comprises:

detecting a blinking item in a partial frame;

flagging the partial frame as blinking;

tagging a first reference frame as ON; and

tagging a second reference frame as OFF.

13. The method of claim 12 , wherein sending the additional frames comprises sending the first and second reference frames in alternating sequence.

14. A computer system comprising:

a source to provide frames at a computer system for transmission through a display transport to a display;

a processor to send frames to the display transport without inter-frame compression in an intra-frame mode;

a reference frame list to list frames saved in a reference frame buffer;

the processor further to switch the computer system to an inter-frame mode and to select a reference frame from the reference frame list;

a codec to compress additional received frames using the selected reference frame;

the processor to improve the reference frame using partial self-refresh updates before compressing; and

the processor to send the additional frames to the display through the display transport compressed in the inter-frame mode.

15. The system of claim 14 , wherein improving comprises:

identifying dirty rectangles of the reference frame;

prioritizing the identified dirty rectangles based on a quality of each dirty rectangle; and

performing the partial self-refresh updates in order of the prioritization constrained by available bandwidth.

16. A computing system comprising:

a display transport;

a display device having a receiver to receive compressed frames from the display transport, a decoder to decompress the received frames and a panel to display the decompressed frames; and

a computing device coupled to a source to provide frames for transmission through the display transport to the display device, the computing device having a reference frame list to list frames saved in a reference frame buffer, a codec to compress received frames in an inter-frame compression scheme using a selected reference frame from the reference frame buffer, and a processor to improve the reference frame using partial self-refresh updates before compressing, to send frames to the display transport without inter-frame compression in an intra-frame mode, to switch to an inter-frame mode and to select a reference frame from the reference frame list, and to send additional frames to the display through the display transport compressed in the inter-frame mode.

17. The system of claim 16 , wherein the reference frame is the last frame sent in the intra-frame mode.

18. The system of claim 16 , wherein the processor is further to monitor performance of the codec by measuring a frame time of the inter-frame compression and to send frames in the intra-frame mode when the codec performance is less than a threshold.