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:
Jan. 23, 2001
Filed:
Sep. 18, 1998
Mark Christopher Fowler, Colchester, VT (US);
Kirk Steffen Haskell, Essex Junction, VT (US);
Robert Spencer Horton, Colchester, VT (US);
Thomas Yu-Kiu Kwok, Washington Township, NJ (US);
Steve Mastrianni, Unionville, CT (US);
Chandrasekhar Narayanaswami, Wilton, CT (US);
Bengt-Olaf Schneider, Yorktown Heights, NY (US);
Mark van Horn, Raleigh, NC (US);
James Lewis van Welzen, Longmont, CO (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus for a computer graphics rendering system which slices the traditional geometry pipeline into two phases to improve overall graphics system utilization is described. The graphics system consists of a host processor and a graphics adapter. The host creates work items and feeds them to the graphics adapter. In the two phase method, the first phase computes the clipping status and immediately returns this status information, before completion of the actual clipping, to the application running on the host processor to minimize stalling the host processor and hence the application. The second phase performs the rest of the work necessary to draw the objects on the screen. The advantage of two phase method is that the host processor minimizes its wait (but only for model/view transformation and clipping status determination) for a return status from the graphics adapter for the current work item and gets to create the next work item from the application sooner.