Abstract: When rendering a scene that includes a complex object made up of many individual primitives, rather than processing each primitive making up the object in turn, a bounding volume which surrounds the complex object is generated and the scene is then processed using the bounding volume in place of the actual primitives making up the complex object. If it is determined that the bounding volume representation of the object will be completely occluded in the scene (e.g. by a foreground object), then the individual primitives making up the complex object are not processed. This can save significantly on processing time and resources for the scene.

Abstract: A graphic rendering pipeline has a number of different rendering units and receives fragments for rendering. A renderer stated word cache is used to store rendering state data to be used to configure the rendering units when they render a fragment. Each rendering unit includes a functional block which carries out a rendering operation on a received fragment and a renderer state word interface that can be used to look up the required rendering state data from the renderer state word cache. Each fragment is provided to the rendering pipeline with fragment data that indicates, inter alia, a fragment index, a renderer state word index, and other fragment data that is necessary to render the fragment. When a rendering unit of the rendering pipeline receives a fragment to be rendered, it firstly uses the renderer state word index associated with the fragment to look-up, using its renderer state word interface, the relevant rendering state data from the renderer state word cache.

Abstract: A distribution medium (20) for providing an application to a host system (4) includes an interface element (21) for interfacing with the host (4), a memory or storage module (22) that stores application code representing the application and a hardware element (23). The hardware element (23) directly accesses application content stored in the memory (22), processes that application content to transform it to another form, and then provides the transformed content to the host system (4).

Abstract: A memory management arrangement includes a memory management unit, a cache memory and a queue arrangement. The queue is a first-in, first-out (FIFO) buffer which can queue failed memory access requests and return them as inputs to the memory management unit via the bus 5 for retrying through the memory management unit at a later time. If a memory access request sent to the memory management unit experiences a cache “miss”, instead of blocking memory access requests until the required address data has been loaded into the cache, the memory management unit operates to place the failed memory access request in the replay queue, and allows subsequent memory access requests to continue. The failed memory access requests in the queue are then continuously circulated through the memory management unit from the queue alternately with new memory access requests from other access initiators.

Abstract: A windowing display using deferred drawing commands operates by processing the drawing commands that write to a tile 22 of a frame buffer 30 to form one or more new pixel values are stored within a tile memory 40. Dirty pixel data indicative of which pixels within the tile memory are dirty pixels storing new pixel values and which pixels within the tile memory are clean pixels not storing new pixel values is also formed. In dependence upon the dirty pixel data, the new pixel value stored within the tile memory are written to the frame buffer memory. Pixels stored within the frame buffer memory corresponding to clean pixels within the tile memory remain unaltered as they are not written.

Abstract: A graphics processing platform includes a rasteriser 50 that receives primitives representing an image to be displayed for processing. The rasteriser 50 determines which sets of sampling points of the image include sampling points that are covered by a given primitive, and then generates a fragment for rendering for each set of sampling points found to include a sampling point that is covered by the primitive and passes those fragments to a renderer 51 for rendering. The renderer 51 carries out rendering operations on the fragments that it receives, and stores the rendered fragment data in tile buffers 52. The rendered fragment data is stored in multiple copies in the appropriate sample positions in the tile buffers 52, so as to provide a separate set of fragment data for each individual sample position taken of the image. The data from the tile buffers 52 is input to a downsampling unit 53, and thence output to a frame buffer 54 of a display device 55 for display.

Abstract: A distribution medium (20) for providing an application to a host system (4) includes an interface element (21) for interfacing with the host (4), a memory or storage module (22) that stores application code representing the application and a hardware element (23). The hardware element (23) directly accesses application content stored in the memory (22), processes that application content to transform it to another form, and then provides the transformed content to the host system (4).