Patent ID: 7139003

Claim:
A computer-readable medium that includes a set of instructions that when executed by a computing device causes the computing device to process fragment data in a fragment processing pipeline, by performing the steps of: shading a first fragment associated with a destination location in a buffer; storing the result of the first fragment shading in the destination location in the buffer; shading a second fragment which is to be based in part on reading the result of the first fragment shading from the destination location; detecting in a conflict detection unit that a read after write position conflict exists for the destination location in the buffer associated with the first and second fragments and interrupting the processing of second fragment; outputting write position information to the conflict detection unit confirming that shading of the first fragment and writing to the buffer is complete; and on completing processing of the first fragment and storing the result in the destination location in the buffer resuming processing of the second fragment, processing of the second fragment including reading the destination location in the buffer without an intervening instruction to flush the fragment processing pipeline.