Patent ID: 7336283

Claim:
A method, comprising: statically allocating a portion of a memory to store a first pre-determined number of base fragments for each of a plurality of pixels; storing base fragments in the statically allocated portion of memory; dynamically allocating a portion of the memory for overflow panes of additional fragment storage, wherein the overflow panes each include storage for a second pre-determined number of fragments for each of a group of the pixels that are physically near each other in a coordinate system; storing overflow panes in the dynamically allocated portion of memory; maintaining address information of the overflow panes separately from fragment data comprising storing the address information in at least one array, each entry of which is associated with a group of the pixels and a group of fragments, each entry of the at least one array storing one of the addresses or a NULL value wherein the at least one array is indexed by at least part of the coordinates of the pixels and by a value representative of at least part of a fragment number; retrieving the overflow panes from the dynamically allocated portion of memory using the maintained address information for rendering an image; and rendering the image on a display.