Single thread graphics processing system and method

Abstract

A present invention pixel processing system and method permit complicated three dimensional images to be rendered with shallow graphics pipelines including reduced gate counts and facilitates power conservation by utilizing a single unified data fetch stage (e.g., unified data fetch module) that retrieves a variety of different pixel surface attribute values for different attribute types (e.g., depth, color, and/or texture values) in a single stage. Different types of pixel surface attribute data (e.g., depth, color, texture) associated with multiple graphics processing functions (e.g., color blending, texture mapping, etc.) are retrieved in the single unified data fetch graphics pipeline stage. The pixel packet rows including the pixel surface attribute values are forwarded to other graphics pipeline stages for single thread processing (e.g. to a universal arithmetic logic unit capable of performing multiple graphics functions on the pixel surface attribute values).