Patent ID: 7039241
Filing Date: 2006-05-02
Classification: G06T

Abstract:
1. A method of compressing color pixels in a graphics processor system comprising; defining a plurality of tiles of data; defining a tile format table containing a status entry for each of said plurality compressing each of said tiles, wherein each tile is compressed if it is determined that compression results in a smaller tile size; setting said status entry for each of said tiles in said tile format table, wherein said status entry indicates the the length in words of each of said tiles after compression, with a full size indicating a non-compressed tile; storing said tiles in a memory; and retrieving said tiles from said memory whereby said status entry is used to determine whether said tiles need to be decompressed at time of retrieval; wherein each of said tiles is compressed using one of a plurality of compression methods; wherein each of said tiles is comprised of pixels having pixel color components; and wherein one of said compression methods comprises entropy encoded differences between adjacent pixel color components, in which unique color or component values in a tile are extracted and sorted by minimal difference, are entropy encoded, and are indexed per pixel in said tile.