Patent ID: 7746357

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a computing device comprising a software mixer, wherein the software mixer comprises: a control component to determine which graphics planes in a plurality of graphics planes are active, said control component to cause circumventing of mixing when less than two graphics planes are active; a region manager component to maintain a list of registered graphics regions of the plurality of graphics planes, wherein each region comprises a plurality of pixels of a respective one of the graphics planes, said region manager component to determine newly painted regions of the registered graphics regions, said region manager component to compare a stacking of the active graphics planes, the comparison identifying any newly painted regions of one active graphics plane overlying any registered graphics regions of another active graphics plane; and a mixer component to receive data from a first buffer that stores data for a first one of the graphics planes, to receive data from a second buffer that stores data for a second different one of the graphics planes, and to output data to a third composite buffer, the mixer component configured to: for only the identified newly painted regions that do overlap according to the comparison, pass pixel data on a per pixel basis from the first and second buffers to assemble a pixel-by-pixel composite of a particular identified newly painted region and its corresponding registered graphics region in the third composite buffer; and for the remaining newly painted regions that do not overlap according to the comparison, pass pixel data on a per region basis from one of the first and second buffers to the third composite buffer; wherein if the control component causes circumventing of mixing, then processing of the active graphics plane bypasses the mixer component and the third composite buffer.