Patent ID: 8624916

Claim:
A raster operations unit, comprising: a data manager configured to: receive an atomic transaction that includes an operation code, one or more source operands and a memory address associated with a memory location within a memory unit that stores a destination operand; and a color raster operations unit including: a color processing pipeline including an internal cache unit; a distribution unit configured to: receive the atomic transaction from the data manager, determine whether the destination operand is stored in the internal cache unit, and transmit the operation code, the one or more source operands and the destination operand to the color processing pipeline; and a blend unit configured to: receive the operation code, one or more source operands, destination operand and an atomic flag from the color processing pipeline, wherein the atomic flag indicates that the operation code is associated with the atomic transaction, process the one or more source operands and the destination operand based on the operation code to produce an atomic transaction result, and transmit the atomic transaction result to the color processing pipeline for storage in the internal cache unit, wherein the color processing pipeline is configured to transmit the result of the atomic transaction to an intermediate cache unit for storage at the memory location.