Every once in a while I find that trying to read and decipher one of Apple's patents is painfully like being an archeologist trying to find meaning in an ancient manuscript that's written in some form of Sanskrit. I'm not even going to pretend to understand the depths of this never ending granted patent which contains in excess of 200 patent figures. All that matters is that Apple's granted patent states emphatically that the invention is about a new graphics processor and method. The graphics processor is specifically referred to as a Deferred Shading Graphics Processor or DSGP. The invention relates to computing systems, to 3D computer graphics and particularly to structure and method for a 3D graphics processor implementing differed shading and other enhanced features. The granted patent appears to be discussing a desktop/workstation graphics processor and interestingly, Apple may have acquired this patent. The lead inventor, listed as Jerome Duluk, used to work at NVIDIA.
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