The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jul. 21, 1992
Filed:
Mar. 14, 1990
Bradley W Cain, Fort Collins, CO (US);
Randall D Briggs, Fort Collins, CO (US);
Hewlett-Packard Company, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
A method and device for improving the processing performance of a transform engine by off-loading the processing of those input polygons which have no more than a predetermined number of edges and decomposing such polygons into trapezoids which can be rendered by a scan conversion system. This is accomplished in accordance with the invention by reading edge data of each input polygon into a RAM and determining the relative positions of the Y coordinates of end points of each edge so that the beginning and end of each respective edge of the polygon in the Y direction may be determined. The polygon is then broken into trapezoids by reading in the respective beginning points of respective edges of the polygon and proceeding until the end point of one of the edges is reached. At the end of one edge, another edge of the polygon is read in, and the process continues until all trapezoids in the polygon have been drawn. Since trapezoids may be much more efficiently handled by the scan conversion system, a significant performance enhancement in the polygon processing is made possible in accordance with the invention.