Vertex pipeline

The point of the vertex pipeline in any GPU is to take geometry data, manipulate it if needed (with either fixed function processes, or a vertex shader program), and project all of the 3D data in a scene to 2 dimensions for display. It is also possible to eliminate unnecessary data from the rendering pipeline to cut out useless work (via view volume clipping and backface culling). After the vertex engine is done processing the geometry, all the 2D projected data is sent to the pixel engine for further processing (like texturing and fragment shading).

As of Direct X 9, the vertex processor is able to do the following by programming the vertex processing under the Direct X API:

   * Tessellation
   * Displacement Mapping
   * Geometry Blending
   * Higher-Order Primitives
   * Point Sprites
   * Matrix Stacks