Patent ID: 8400451

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of storing two-dimensional data in system memory, the method comprising: a) defining a hierarchical series of tessellations of uniform aperture three hexagonal cells using a processor, each tessellation having a resolution and being stored in the system memory; b) mapping one or more attributes from a continuous space to the cells of each tessellation; c) assigning each cell in a lowest resolution tessellation a unique index comprising an identifying value; d) associating each cell in a given tessellation that is not the lowest resolution with a parent cell contained in the next lower resolution tessellation based on the location of the parent cell relative to a grandparent cell contained in a tessellation of one lower resolution than the parent cell; and e) assigning each cell not in the lowest resolution tessellation a unique hierarchical index comprising an index of the parent cell associated therewith and an identifying value.