Re: [MiNT] Allocation of video RAM

["Jo Even Skarstein" <joska@online.no>]

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From: "Peter Persson" <pep.fishmoose@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, May 31, 2010 2:04 PM
To: "Miro Kropacek" <miro.kropacek@gmail.com>
Cc: "MiNT Mailing List" <mint@lists.fishpool.fi>
Subject: Re: [MiNT] Allocation of video RAM

> The SuperVidel has 128 megs of VRAM. Blits between VRAM<>VRAM are really 
> fast. I think that's the situation
> with other graphics cards too. But there is no sane way to allocate such 
> memory in an application. Not that I know of.

Offscreen bitmaps perhaps? Allocation of these is handled by the VDI, and so 
is blits between the on- and offscreen bitmaps. So - atleast in theory - any 
application that use offscreen bitmaps will take advantage of the fast VRAM 
in the SuperVidel (or any other graphics card) if the driver handles it.

> Why shouldn't an application be able to do this? AFAIK libraries such as 
> SDL has support for this (I may be wrong though).
> In theory, maybe an application would like to render a texture somewhere 
> in VRAM before it's mapped onto a polygon. Or something :)

Again, this sounds like the purpose of offscreen bitmaps.

Jo Even