Patent ID: 8232991

Claim:
A method of processing z pass data and pixel tile data to produce reconciled coverage data for a pixel tile, comprising: rasterizing a graphics primitive to produce a rasterized coverage mask that indicates which sample positions within the pixel tile are covered by a fragment formed by an intersection of the pixel tile and the graphics primitive; obtaining an index from a data packet that stores at least a portion of the pixel tile data for the pixel tile; determining that the z pass data corresponding to the index is stored in a multithreaded first-in first-out (FIFO) memory; reading the z pass data to obtain a z pass coverage mask that is produced by z testing per-sample z values computed for the pixel tile based on a current z buffer; and computing the reconciled coverage data including a post-z test coverage mask for at least a portion of the pixel tile by performing a bit-wise AND between the z pass coverage mask and the rasterized coverage mask.