Rasterization

Definitions

1. The process of converting vector graphics or 3D geometry (triangles, primitives) into a grid of pixels for display on a screen. The GPU's rasterization stage determines which pixels each triangle covers, then runs fragment shaders to compute their final color — this is the dominant real-time rendering approach over ray tracing for most applications.

   In plain English: Converting shapes and 3D objects into the individual colored dots (pixels) you actually see on your screen.

   Example: "The bottleneck is rasterization — we're pushing 4 million triangles per frame and the fill rate can't keep up at 4K."

Related Terms

• Draw
• Shader
• WebGPU
• Compute Shader
• Fragment Shader
• Layout Engine
• Pixel Buffer
• Reconciliation
• Render Pipeline
• Screen Buffer
• Texture
• Vertex Shader