Patent ID: 7330188

Claim:
A graphics accelerator for processing graphics data configured to utilize a plurality of texels to determine a texture value of a pixel, one or more of the plurality of texels being used a plurality of times to generate pixels in a triangle, the graphics accelerator comprising: a texture cache, including a texture cache storage unit configured to store the plurality of texels and a buffer configured to store texel cache addresses; and a memory access engine coupled to the texture cache and configured to read the texels from a local memory or a system memory and determine from the flags whether the plurality of texels is present, wherein the texture cache further includes: a translation engine configured to generate cache addresses for a missing texel, determine if each texel corresponding to a cache address is present in the texture cache storage unit, and generate miss requests for texels that are not present in the texture cache storage unit; a miss processor configured to process miss requests to obtain texels that are not present in the texture cache, and wherein; said buffer comprising multiple stages of a length about the same as the time required to process a miss request and configured to store available texel data and the texel cache addresses for missing texel data wherein said buffer, further configured to store flags indicating which texels are being accessed by the miss processor, each said flag corresponding to a texel and further indicating whether the texel is present in the texture cache storage unit, wherein the miss processor causes the missing texel data, when retrieved, to be placed in the cache storage unit and resets the flag in the buffer corresponding to the missing texel to indicate that the texel data needed to process a pixel is now in the cache storage unit.