Patent ID: 7400325

Claim:
A graphics processing subsystem adapted to render a stream of primitives, the graphics processing subsystem comprising: a first cache memory adapted to store a set of vertices associated with at least a portion of a first stream of primitives; a viewport and culling unit adapted to receive the first stream of primitives and to transform a subset of the set of vertices associated with each primitive to a screen-space coordinate system; a setup unit adapted to receive a second stream of primitives from the viewport and culling unit and to prepare each primitive for rasterization; and wherein the viewport and culling unit is adapted to determine the potential visibility of each one of the first stream of primitives and to output as the second stream of primitives a subset of the first stream of primitives that are potentially visible; and wherein the setup unit is further adapted to determine the potential visibility of each one of the second stream of primitives and to output a third stream of primitives that are potentially visible.