Patent ID: 7978205

Claim:
A method for performing geometry shading on at least one stream of graphics primitives data by a geometry shader subunit of a hardware graphics processing unit (GPU) defining a graphics pipeline, the method comprising: receiving at least one primitive of at least one input stream of graphics primitives data as input to the geometry shader, wherein the at least one input stream of graphics primitives data includes any of a stream of sets of two related vertices and a stream of sets of three related vertices; performing computation, via the hardware GPU, on the at least one primitive of the at least one input stream of graphics primitives data by the geometry shader, wherein: said performing computation includes processing a unique index assigned to each primitive of the at least one primitive of at least one input stream of graphics primitives data and synchronizing each unique index with the corresponding data being processed; and the graphics primitives data is identified within the graphics pipeline by said synchronized unique index; and processing data calls using the synchronized unique index to further access graphics primitives data as input data to the geometry shader for use inside the pipeline from the output stream of the geometry shader within the pipeline to generate new primitives data prior to an output merger of data.