Patent ID: 7274369

Claim:
Apparatus comprising a programmable fragment processing pipeline for compositing digital images including a fragment processor, the fragment processor comprising subunits configured by codewords to perform a plurality of point compositing operations during multiple process through a fragment shader to generate a composited frame intended for output, comprising: a gatekeeper that selects between a rasterizer, a shader unit, or a feedback output generated by a combiner during multiple passes through a fragment shader for receiving digital image data representing a first source image capable of separate, independent display including first fragment data defined by vertices from a local memory coupled to the fragment processor; receiving shader program instructions state bundles and data; and receiving processed fragment data and codewords from a combiner unit; receiving shader program instructions state bundles and data from a rasterizer; generating codewords from shader program instructions via at least one internal instruction processing unit; inserting said generated codewords into a fragment data stream; and outputting said fragment data stream to a shader core, the shader core for processing the digital image data on a point basis using the shader program instructions to define the codewords to generate composited image data comprising fragment data; the shader core receiving additional digital image data of at least one additional digital image representing a second source image including neighboring fragment data; the second source image being capable of separate independent display from the first source image and a remapper unit cooperating with a shader back end unit configured to process the composited image data and the additional digital image data using at least one further point compositing operation defined by one or more of the codewords, to generate further composited destination image data based on the data in each of the first and second source images being processed by the fragment processor utilizing one or more different ones of a plurality of compositing operations prior to being combined in the destination image; and a shader back end unit configured to cooperate with the combiner unit to combine the first and second source images being combined over all of the first and second source images to define the composited destination image as a composited frame the combiner unit configured to either output the composited image data and a portion of the codewords for processing by the texture unit or output the composited image data for storage in a graphics memory.