Patent ID: 7808501

Claim:
A method of shader slicing, comprising the steps of: selecting a master shader which operates on sample vectors, wherein the sample vectors each comprise a plurality of packets, wherein each packet represents a shading property; selecting a desired set of output packets; creating a sliced shader from the master shader to compute only the desired set of output packets; and performing the following method on the sliced shader: storing shading information in a sample vector comprising a plurality of packets, wherein each packet represents a shading property; performing a series of sequential actions on the sample vector, wherein each of the sequential actions operates on at least one, but less than all of the plurality of packets in the sample vector, such that the sample vector is updated by each sequential action, the series of sequential actions consisting of: first, performing a base material calculation, second, performing a general shader calculation, third, performing an effect calculation, and fourth, performing a lighting computation; and then, reading out shading results from modified or unmodified packets in a final sample vector.