Multi-texturing by walking an appropriately-sized supertile over a primitive

A method comprising:

• traversing a first primitive with a rectangle of bins, wherein a sample capacity of the rectangle of bins is equal to the sample capacity of the texture accumulation buffer, wherein the sample capacity of the rectangle of bins equals the number of bins contained in the rectangle times the number of samples per bin, wherein a union of successive areas visited by the rectangle in said traversal cover the first primitive, wherein, for each position P of the rectangle in said traversal, said traversing comprises repeatedly walking over candidate bins in the rectangle, wherein each iteration I of said repeated walking over candidate bins in the rectangle corresponds to a layer LI of a set of texture data layers stored in a texture memory and comprises computing a texture coordinate vector VECP,I,B for the corresponding layer LI at each candidate bin B in the rectangle at position P;
• reading one or more texels of the texture data layer LI from the texture memory based on the texture coordinate vector VECP,I,B and generating a texture value TVP,I,B using the one or more texels;
• and
• applying the texture value TVP,I,B to samples of the corresponding candidate bin B in the rectangle at position P, and storing the textured samples in a texture accumulation buffer between the application of successive layers of the texture data layers.

A method comprising:

• (a) computing one or more texture values for a bin in a rectangle of bins, wherein the rectangle of bins intersects a primitive;
• (b) applying the one or more texture values to a set of data values associated with the bin, wherein each texture value is derived from the first layer of texture stored in the texture memory;
• (c) storing the textured data values for the bin into a texture accumulation buffer;
• (d) performing (a), (b) and (c) for each bin B, of the rectangle of bins, which intersects the primitive;
• (e) performing (d) for each texture layer among a plurality of texture layers stored in the texture memory;
• wherein memory capacity needed to store data values for the rectangle of bins is less than or equal to the memory capacity of the texture accumulation buffer.

A method comprising:

• (a) receiving information defining a geometric primitive;
• (b) computing a set of one or more texture coordinates for a bin B in a supertile, wherein the supertile intersects the primitive, wherein the set of one or more texture coordinates corresponds to a first layer of texture stored in a texture memory;
• (c) applying at least one texture value, corresponding to the set of one or more texture coordinates, to a set of one or more data values associated with the bin B, wherein said at least one texture value is derived from the first layer of texture stored in the texture memory, wherein said applying produces one or more textured data values;
• (d) storing the one or more textured data values for the bin B into a texture accumulation buffer;
• (e) performing (b), (c) and (d) for each bin B that is in the supertile and that intersects the triangle;
• and
• (f) performing (e) for each texture layer among a plurality of texture layers stored in the texture memory;
• wherein the number of bins included in the supertile is determined so that the number of data values associated with the bins included in the supertile is less than or equal to a capacity of the texture accumulation buffer.

A graphics system comprising:

• a means for storing a plurality of layers of texture data;
• a means for buffering textured samples;
• a means for traversing a first primitive with a supertile, wherein, for each position P of the supertile in said traversal, said traversing means is configured to walk over each candidate bin B in the supertile one or more times, wherein said one or more iterations of walking correspond respectively to one or more of the texture layers;
• a means for reading and applying texture information from the texture memory to samples in each of the candidate bins, wherein, in each of said iterations of walking, said applying means is configured to read and apply texture information from a corresponding one of the texture layers to data values associated with the samples within the supertile and to store resulting textured data values in the accumulation buffer;
• wherein the number of bins included in the supertile is determined so that the number of samples associated with the bins included in the supertile is less than or equal to a capacity for textured samples of the texture accumulation buffer.