Patent ID: 7286134

Claim:
A method of storing data within a tile representing graphics data for a plurality of pixels, comprising: for pixels associated with said tile, storing uncompressed stencil data into a first portion of said tile wherein each pixel has an individual stencil value; and for pixels associated with said tile, storing compressed z data into a second portion of said tile such that said tile simultaneously stores uncompressed stencil data in said first portion and compressed z data in said second portion; in a subsequent stencil-only rendering mode, performing a memory access to access only stencil data associated with said first portion such that the memory access does not require uncompressing z-data; wherein said stencil data and said z data are stored in different portions of said tile that are independently addressable; said first portion and said second portion each including at least one data section with at least two separate memory accesses required to access all of the data sections associated with said tile; wherein the tile is stored in a partition of a partitioned graphics memory having a plurality of partitions and at least two sub-partitions per partition with each sub-partition being a minimum addressable unit, said partitioned graphics memory having a separate bus for accessing each partition and separate sub-buses for separately accessing each sub-partition within a particular partition such that in a single memory access to a selected partition each corresponding sub-partition is capable of being accessed in parallel, each data section having a byte size corresponding to a byte size for accessing one sub-partition via one of said sub-buses such that each data section of the tile is assigned to one of the sub-partitions of the partition assigned to store the tile.