Patent ID: 6870540

Claim:
A method for programmable pixel processing in a computer graphics pipeline, comprising: (a) receiving pixel data from a source buffer; (b) performing programmable operations on the pixel data in order to generate output, wherein the operations are programmable by a user utilizing pixel data-related instructions from a predetermined instruction set; and (c) storing the output in a register; (d) wherein the pixel data-related instructions include a no operation instruction, more instruction, multiply instruction, addition instruction, multiply and addition instruction, reciprocal instruction, reciprocal square root instruction, three component dot product instruction, four component dot product instruction, minimum instruction, maximum instruction, fraction instruction, exponential base two (2) instruction, logarithm base two (2) instruction, set on less than instruction for setting a destination to a predetermined number if a first source is less than a second source, set on greater or equal than instruction for setting a destination to a predetermined number if a first source is greater or equal than a second source, and kill pixel instruction; (e) wherein the pixel data is swizzled, and the swizzling includes a pixel-related vector component re-mapping.