Method and apparatus in a data processing system for rendering through multiple clip regions

摘要

A method, apparatus and computer instructions for processing graphics data in a graphics adapter for a set of clip areas in a clip region. Trivial rejection is performed on primitives to reject any primitive outside of the set of clip rectangles, wherein a set of identified primitives is formed in which the set of identified primitives contain unrejected primitives. The set of identified primitives is sent to a memory in the graphics adapter as a command stream to form a set of stored commands. A hardware clipper in the graphics adapter is set to an unprocessed clip rectangle within the set of clip rectangles. The set of identified primitives for the unprocessed clip rectangle is processed using the hardware clipper with the set of stored commands in the memory. The setting of the hardware clipper and the rendering of the set of identified primitives is repeated for each unprocessed clip rectangle until all of the clip rectangles in the set of clip rectangles are processed. The set of clip rectangles are processed without requiring resending of the command stream to the graphics adapter for each clip rectangle in the set of clip rectangles.