Patent ID: 7142215

Claim:
A computing system comprising: local memory configured to store graphics data including input vertex data describing a primitive; and a graphics subsystem having a programmable processing pipeline including a geometry processor configured to receive the input vertex data from a host computer and processed vertex data from the graphics pipeline and a resampler for operating on the set of input vertices and generating new samples covering an internal surface of the primitive, and a fragment processor with an interface configured to receive the graphics data from the local memory, the fragment processor being further configured to change surface geometry of the stencil data the processing pipeline being configured to process the received graphics data to generate stencil data, the processing pipeline further configured to output the stencil data to the local memory; wherein the local memory includes a stencil buffer for storing the stencil data in any one of a plurality of data formats as defined by the resampler in a texture data format after processing by the fragment processor; and the fragment processor being further configured to alternatively return the processed data directly to the geometry processor.