Rendering system using 3D texture-processing hardware for accelerated 2D rendering

摘要

A 3D rendering accelerator, in which the hardware texturing capability is also used to provide enhanced 2D rendering. Texturing units, when operating in a 2D mode, are available for use for storing icons and characters locally to avoid the expense of doing a lookup from the host system. Texturing units are also used as storage for pattern data for performing a tiled fill of a graphical object and for defining arbitrarily large stipple patterns. Color index dither patterns may also be stored in the texture units to avoid the necessity of doing a texture download from the host system.