Abstract: A system and method for rasterizing and rendering graphics data is disclosed. Vertices may be grouped to form primitives such as triangles, which are rasterized using two-dimensional arrays of samples bins. Individual samples may be selected from the bins according to different criteria such as memory bank allocation to improve utilization of the system's rendering pipeline. Since the arrays may have more bins than the number of evaluation units in the rendering pipeline, the samples from the bins may be stored to FIFO memories to allow invalid or empty samples (those outside the primitive being rendered) to be removed. The samples may then be filtered to form pixels that are displayable to form an image on a display device.

Abstract: A graphics system may be configured to render anti-aliased dots in terms of samples and to generate pixels by filtering the samples. The pixels are supplied to one or more display devices. The means used to generate the samples may perform the computation of radial distance at positions on a grid in a rendering coordinate space, and interpolate estimates for the radial distances of samples around the dot as needed based on the radii at the grid positions.

Abstract: A graphics system and method for displaying lines on a display device. The system may comprise a sample buffer, a rendering unit and a sample-to-pixel calculation unit. The rendering unit may (a) generate a plurality of sample positions in a two-dimensional space, (b) determine a sample normal distance for each of the sample positions with respect to a line defined by the line-draw command, (c) assign sample values to the sample positions based on the sample normal distance of each of the sample positions, and (d) store the sample values in the sample buffer. The sample-to-pixel calculation unit may read sample values from the sample buffer, filter them to determine a pixel value, and transmit the pixel value to the display device. The rendering unit may render the line sample values with a narrower width to pre-compensate for the line-expanding effect of the filtering performed by the sample-to-pixel calculation unit.