Deferred shading graphics pipeline processor
August 4, 2020. Estimated Expiration Date is calculated based on simple USPTO term provisions. It does not account for terminal disclaimers, term adjustments, failure to pay maintenance fees, or other factors which might affect the term of a patent.Patent ReferencesInteractive display apparatus and method with viewer position compensation Rendering global macro texture, for producing a dynamic image, as on computer generated terrain, seen from a moving viewpoint Computer graphics system for rendering images using full spectral illumination data Method and apparatus for clipping non-planar polygons Method and system for rendering graphical objects to image chunks Method system and computer program product for shading Caching and coherency control of multiple geometry accelerators in a computer graphics system Method, system, and computer program product for bump mapping in tangent space Increased performance of graphics memory using page sorting fifos Patent #: 6002412 Inventors
AssigneeApplicationNo. 632293 filed on 08/04/2000US Classes:345/506, Pipeline processors345/422Z buffer (depth buffer)ExaminersPrimary: Tung, Kee M.Attorney, Agent or FirmInternational ClassG06T 001/20AbstractThree-dimensional computer graphics systems and methods and more particularly to structure and method for a three-dimensional graphics processor and having other enhanced graphics processing features. In one embodiment the graphics processor is a Deferred Shading Graphics Processor (DSGP) comprising an AGP interface, a command fetch & decode (2000), a geometry unit (3000), a mode extraction (4000) and polygon memory (5000), a sort unit (6000) and sort memory (7000), a setup unit (8000), a cull unit (9000), a mode injection (10000), a fragment unit (11000), a texture (12000) and texture memory (13000) a phong shading (14000), a pixel unit (15000), a backend unit (1600) coupled to a frame buffer (17000). Other embodiments need not include all of these functional units, and the structures and methods of these units are applicable to other computational processes and systems as well as deferred and non-deferred shading graphical processors.Other References
Field of SearchThree-dimensionSolid modelling Hidden line/surface determining Z buffer (depth buffer) COMPUTER GRAPHIC PROCESSING SYSTEM Plural graphics processors Coprocessor (e.g., graphic accelerator) Graphic command processing COMPUTER GRAPHICS DISPLAY MEMORY SYSTEM Graphic display memory controller Plural memory controllers Plural storage devices Data transfer between memories Frame buffer Logical operations Bit block transfer | |
