Graphics stack: Difference between revisions

Then next level is the renderer, which is where individual images or sections of images get created. This is where you really see 3-D becoming a separate thing, as most systems prior to, say, 2007 would have used a strictly 2-D rendering for everything that didn't specifically require 3-D rendering, due to the need for hardware acceleration for practical real-time 3-D rendering at the time. As Brendan has pointed out before, right now the Cycle of Reincarnation for graphics rendering has been swinging towards CPU-driven rendering since the 2012 or so, though dedicated rendering hardware is still dominant at the moment. Note, however, that the graphics rendering Wheel of Incarnation has been rolling since the very first days of computer graphics in the early 1960s, so it is a good guess that this won't be the last word on the subject.