Graphics pre-processing and rendering system

A graphics pre-processing and rendering system, comprising:

• a pre-processing unit having an input connected to receive graphics data and to produce pre-rendering data including primitive boundary coordinates;
• a memory connected to said pre-processing unit to store said prerendering data;
• a rendering unit functionally connected to said pre-processing unit to receive window boundary data and said pre-rendering data;
• and
• wherein said rendering unit reads said pre-rendering data, performs at least one scissoring operation with said pre-rendering data and said boundary data, and renders a primitive according to the result of said operation.

A graphics processing subsystem, comprising:

• a pre-processing unit having an input connected to receive graphics data and to produce pre-rendering data including primitive boundary coordinates;
• at least four functionally distinct processing units, each including hardware elements which are customized to perform a rendering operation which is not performed by at least some others of said processing units;
• at least some ones of said processing units being connected to operate asynchronously to one another;
• a frame buffer, connected to be accessed by at least one of said processing units;
• said processing units being mutually interconnected in a pipeline relationship, such that said processing units jointly provide a pipelined multiple-instruction-multiple-device (MIMD) graphics processing architecture;
• wherein at least one of said processing units reads said pre-rendering data, performs at least one scissoring operation with said prerendering data and said boundary data, and passes data to the other said units according to the result of said operation.