A system and method for generating pixels for a display device. The system may
include a sample buffer for storing a plurality samples in a memory, a sample cache
for caching recently accessed samples, and a sample filter unit for filtering one
or more samples to generate a pixel. The generated pixels may then be stored in
a frame buffer or provided to a display device. The method operates to take advantage
of the common samples shared by neighboring pixels in both the x and y directions
for reduced sample buffer accesses and improved performance. The method involves
reading samples from the memory that correspond to pixels in a plurality of neighboring
scan lines, and possibly also to multiple pixels in each of these scan lines. The
samples may be stored in a cache memory and then accessed from the cache memory
for filtering. The method maximizes use of the common samples shared by neighboring
pixels in both the x and y directions.
