Abstract: A method and system for minimizing an amount of data needed to test data against subarea boundaries in spatially composited digital video. Spatial compositing uses a graphics unit or pipeline to render a portion (subarea) of each overall frame of digital video images. This reduces the amount of data that each processor must act on and increases the rate at which an overall frame is rendered. Optimization of spatial compositing depends on balancing the processing load among the different pipelines. The processing load typically is a direct function of the size of a given subarea and a function of the rendering complexity for objects within this subarea. Load balancing strives to measure these variables and adjust, from frame to frame, the number, sizes, and positions of the subareas. The cost of this approach is the necessity to communicate, in conjunction with each frame, the graphics data that will be rendered. Graphics data for a frame is composed of geometry chunks.

Abstract: A system and method for controlling graphics rendering pipelines. The pipeline is unstalled in response to a display interval complete signal which allows pipeline processing to proceed even at the beginning of a tolerance interval. A stall controller unstalls processing of the graphics data in the graphics rendering pipeline when a display interval complete signal has been generated. A stall token installer inserts stall tokens in between frames of the graphics data. A queue stores frame complete markers in an order matching the order of stall tokens inserted in between frames of graphics data.