Circuit and method for processing render commands in a tile-based graphics system

Abstract

A method performed in a graphics processor associates at least a portion (e.g. a triangle) of each primitive received from a CPU with each tile that is affected by the primitive (e.g. by storing the triangle in one or more tile-specific buffers, also called simply “tile buffer”). Moreover, the method stores packets that contain commands (also called “render commands”) for rendering the primitives (also called “command packets”) in a common buffer (called “broadcast buffer”), thereby to eliminate storage of the same commands in each tile buffer. The method repeats the just-described acts of associating primitives and storing command packets for each of a number of packets of primitives and commands that are generated by an application program for the display of a single frame. At a later time, the method uses the command packets from the broadcast buffer with primitives (or portions thereof) in each tile buffer tile, e.g. in one embodiment renders an image. The same render commands that are held in the broadcast buffer are used repeatedly, once for each tile buffer.