Patent ID: 8111928

Claim:
A method of data compression comprising: grouping a plurality of pixel data into a plurality of tiles; prior to compression, evaluating said tiles for compression suitability to determine if said tile is to be fully compressed, partially compressed or uncompressed, wherein said full or partial compression recognizes duplicate data and reduces amount of duplicate data stored within said tiles and wherein evaluating prior to compression comprises determining whether partial compression will result in memory space saving compared to uncompressed pixel data; and fully or partially compressing said tiles if said tiles are deemed suitable for said full or partial compression; wherein said evaluating further comprises: determining that a tile is suitable for partial compression when the tile is covered by a plurality of primitives; designating said tile for partial compression if it is deemed to be suitable and wherein partial compression comprises employing at least two color designations for subsamples of a same tile to compress data for the tile; partially compressing the tile using a single bit to represent each of the at least two color designations; and wherein the tile is stored in an uncompressed format when it is covered by more than two primitives.