Claims
- 1. A computer graphics process for scan processing object primitives to generate display pixels, as in a frame buffer, the pixels being organized in screen space having an associative space relationship with a display image space, said process including the steps of:defining object primitives in relation to a plurality of panels, each panel including a plurality of span areas, each span area including a plurality of contiguous pixel areas of said display image space; scanning said panels to locate span areas; scanning said span areas to locate lapped spans, with lapped pixels within a primitive; scanning pixels within said lapped spans to locate lapped pixels for processing; and processing said lapped pixels as scanned, in parallel, span-by-span to provide pixel data in said frame buffer.
- 2. A computer graphics process according to claim 1, further including the step of defining a size of said span areas according to a size defined for said blocks of data received and transmitted by said interface.
- 3. A computer graphics process according to claim 1, further including the step of storing said blocks of pixel data received and transmitted by said cache.
- 4. A computer graphics process according to claim 3, further including the step of defining a size of said span areas according to a size defined for said blocks of data received and transmitted by said cache.
- 5. A computer graphics process according to claim 1, further including the steps of:retrieving a block of texture data from a texture memory, said texture memory including an interface adapted to receive and transmit rectangular blocks of data; and processing said block of texture data to provide texture for a span of said pixels.
- 6. A computer graphics process according to claim 1, wherein said step of processing said lapped pixels within each span further includes the steps of:retrieving blocks of prior pixel data from said frame buffer; processing said blocks of prior pixel data from said frame buffer to provide said blocks of pixel data.
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
This is a continuation-in-part of application Ser. No. 08/370,669 filed Jan. 10, 1995 and entitled “COMPUTER GRAPHICS PIXEL RENDERING SYSTEM WITH MULTI-LEVEL SCANNING” (as amended) now issued U.S. Pat. No. 5,598,517 and a continuation of application Ser. No. 08/788,738 filed Jan. 24, 1997 which is now issued U.S. Pat. No. 5,821,944.
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Number |
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5363475 |
Baker et al. |
Nov 1994 |
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5598517 |
Watkins |
Jan 1997 |
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Continuations (1)
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Date |
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Parent |
08/788738 |
Jan 1997 |
US |
Child |
08/370669 |
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US |
Continuation in Parts (1)
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08/370669 |
Jan 1995 |
US |
Child |
09/121389 |
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US |