Patent ID: 7928997

Claim:
A method of compositing digital images in a programmable graphics processor including a fragment processor, the fragment processor being configured by codewords to perform one or more of a plurality of point compositing operations, comprising: receiving digital image data representing a first source image capable of independent display including first fragment data defined by vertices from a local memory coupled to the programmable graphics processor; receiving shader program instructions and state bundles at a gatekeeper unit, which also receives feedback data from a combiner unit, to enable processing of the first fragment data in one or more passes through the fragment processor selecting between the digital image data and the feedback data; processing within the fragment processor the digital image data stored in a local memory or fed back from the combiner unit on a point basis using the shader program instructions which define first codewords to generate composited image data, the state bundles and codewords being inserted in a fragment data stream, the digital image data being read from a single (x,y) location in the first source image and rewritten to a single (x,y) location in a composited destination image represented by the composited image data; receiving additional digital image data of at least one additional digital image representing a second source image including neighboring fragment data defined in part by different points (x,y) from the local memory, wherein the second source image is capable of separate independent display from the first source image; processing within the fragment processor the composited image data and the additional digital image data using at least one further point compositing operation defined by one or more second codewords and state bundles, the point compositing operation comprising reading a fragment from a single (x,y) location in each of the composited image data and the additional digital image data and writing the fragment to a single (x,y) location in a composited destination image represented by composited destination image data based on one or more different one of a plurality of compositing operations prior to being combined in the composited destination image, the processing including a region compositing operation including acquiring neighboring fragment data comprising fragment data from two (x,y) locations in one of the first and second source images and writing a composited fragment to the one (x,y) location in the composited destination image; and outputting the composited destination image for display on a display device or for storage in a memory.