Silicon Graphics, Incorporated

Shutterfly, Inc.

Danny D Loh

John Stephen Montrym

Robert A Drebin

Mark S Peercy

Christopher J Migdal

David L Dignam

John Milligan Airey

Daniel R Baum

Jimmy Ping Fai Chui

Jimmy Pig Fai Chui

A floating point rasterization and frame buffer in a computer system graphics program. The rasterization, fog, lighting, texturing, blending, and antialiasing processes operate on floating point values. In one embodiment, a 16-bit floating point format consisting of one sign bit, ten mantissa bits, and five exponent bits (s10e5), is used to optimize the range and precision afforded by the 16 available bits of information. In other embodiments, the floating point format can be defined in the manner preferred in order to achieve a desired range and precision of the data stored in the frame buffer. The final floating point values corresponding to pixel attributes are stored in a frame buffer and eventually read and drawn for display. The graphics program can operate directly on the data in the frame buffer without losing any of the desired range and precision of the data.

Display system having floating point rasterization and floating point framebuffering

A multi-tier data storage system includes a first data storage unit for storing recently loaded data files; a second data storage unit coupled to the first data storage unit for archiving data files residing on the first data storage unit for more than a predetermined period of time; and, a third data storage unit coupled to the second data storage unit, the third data storage unit caching files archived in the second data storage unit if the data file is unavailable on the first data storage unit.

Multi-tier data storage system

A method facilitates photographic print re-ordering by encoding a photographic print with an identifier identifying a recipient of the photographic print and one or more printing parameters associated with the photographic print.

Facilitating photographic print re-ordering

Growing community of inventors

Fremont, CA, United States of America

Danny D Loh