Texture Compression Techniques
In this paper, we present a detailed analysis and comparison of texture compression techniques and their hardware implementations used in modern PCs, tablets and smartphones, based on their characteristics, such as compression rates and image quality. First, we review the family of the earliest massively used compression schemes, the S3TC (BC1-BC3). Then, we move on to BC4, BC5, BC6H and BC7 formats, which improved the image quality by providing more flexibility as well as introducing block partitioning. We also analyze the mobile targeted ETC family (PACKMAN, ETC1 (iPACKMAN) and ETC2/EAC), developed by Ericsson, and the PVRTC family of formats, created by Imagination Technologies. Finally, we present ASTC, the latest texture compression technology resulted from a collaboration of AMD and ARM. BISE encoding and other features of ASTC are described in details.