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:
May. 28, 2002
Filed:
Oct. 15, 1999
Ross Cunniff, Fort Collins, CO (US);
Hewlett-Packard Company, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
The present invention is generally directed to a system and method for performing accumulation buffer operations using texture mapping hardware. In accordance with one aspect of the invention, a method is provided that operates by allocating a texture map of equal size as a display screen and copying contents of a frame buffer to the allocated texture map. The method then identifies an accumulation buffer operation and performs the accumulation buffer operation in a fragment unit. Preferably, the fragment unit includes an arithmetic logic unit (ALU) to perform high-speed mathematical operations. Finally, the method directs results of the accumulation buffer operation to the frame buffer, and copies contents of the frame buffer to the allocated texture map.