Patent ID: 6924801

Claim:
A system, used as a host for a graphics pipeline, comprising: a host processor executing a graphics application program, wherein the graphics application program is capable to implement: a generation stage for creation, acquisition, and modification of information to be displayed, and organizing the information into application data structures; and a traversal stage for traversal of the application data structures, and passing on appropriate graphics data; and a graphics processor, communicatively couples to the host processor, capable to implement: a transformation stage for transformation of graphics data from object space coordinates into eye-space coordinates, performing requested lighting operation, clipping the transformed data in clip-space, and projecting resulting coordinates into window-space; a rasterization stage for rendering window-space primitives into a frame buffer, and performing shading calculations, texture lookups and calculations, and per-pixel operations; a feedback loop permitting the rasterization stage to return information to the traversal stage; and a display stage for scanning resulting pixels in frame buffer for display to a display device.