Patent ID: 7385607
Filing Date: 2008-06-10
Classification: G06T

Abstract:
1. A shader, comprising: a plurality of shader pipelines, each one of the shader pipelines for processing segments of rasterized pixel data; a plurality of shader schedulers coupled to the plurality of shader pipelines and configured to select portions of a graphics program to produce fragment programs that each include a limited number of program instructions that control the processing of the segments of rasterized pixel data, wherein the limited number is based on resources of the plurality of shader pipelines; a shader distributor for segmenting a raster stream of pixel data into the segments of rasterized pixel data of a limited size and selectively distributing the segments of rasterized pixel data to said plurality of shader pipelines, wherein the shader distributor broadcasts triangle information to all of the shader pipelines in the plurality of shader pipelines to configure a set of shader pipelines that are not processing a segment of rasterized pixel data and validates the triangle information to initiate processing of segments of rasterized pixel data using the triangle information; and a shader collector for collecting the result of the shader pipelines to form shaded pixel data that is suitable for display.