Patent ID: 6914610

Claim:
A graphics system comprising: a texture memory configured to store a plurality of image modification information (IMI) layers; and a hardware accelerator configured to receive a first stream of primitives, to operate on the first stream of primitives to generate a second stream of primitives that are limited in size to a value less than or equal to a fragment capacity of a texture accumulation buffer (TAB), and for each primitive of the second stream: (a) to identify fragments in a rendering space which intersect the primitive, (b) to access said texture memory to obtain data words from one of said IMI layers and apply fragment texture values derived from said data words to color data associated with the intersecting fragments, (c) to repeatedly perform (b) for different ones of said IMI layers, and (d) to store the color data associated with said intersecting fragments in the TAB between successive iterations of (b); wherein the hardware accelerator is configured to operate on the first stream of primitives by performing a size comparison on each primitive of the first stream to determine if an upper bound for the number of said fragments intersecting the primitive is less than or equal to a lower bound for the fragment capacity of the TAB, and subdividing the primitive into subprimitives if the size comparison indicates that the upper bound is greater than the lower bound, wherein the subprimitives generated by said subdividing have fragment sizes that are less than or equal to the fragment capacity of the TAB; and wherein the color data for said intersecting fragments, after a final iteration of (b), is usable to determine at least a portion of a video output signal.