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:
Oct. 02, 2007
Filed:
Aug. 23, 2004
Jiangming Xu, San Jose, CA (US);
Wen-chung Chen, Cupertino, CA (US);
Yuanfeng Wang, Shanghai, CN;
Liang LI, Shanghai, CN;
John Brothers, Calistoga, CA (US);
Boris Prokopenko, Milpitas, CA (US);
Jiangming Xu, San Jose, CA (US);
Wen-Chung Chen, Cupertino, CA (US);
Yuanfeng Wang, Shanghai, CN;
Liang Li, Shanghai, CN;
John Brothers, Calistoga, CA (US);
Boris Prokopenko, Milpitas, CA (US);
VIA Technologies, Inc., Hsin-Tien, Taipei, TW;
Abstract
The computer graphics system is configured to improve the performance of a stencil shadow volume method for rendering shadows. The apparatus and methods utilize a combination of compressed and uncompressed stencil buffers in coordination with compressed and uncompressed depth data buffers. An uncompressed stencil buffer is capable of storing stencil shadow volume data for each pixel and a compressed stencil buffer is capable of storing stencil shadow volume data for a group of pixels. The compressed stencil buffer is utilized with a compressed stencil buffer cache to perform a stencil shadow volume operation more efficiently than present methods.