Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!sun-barr!newstop!sun!cyclone!rayl
From: rayl%cyclone@Sun.COM (Ray Lamoreaux)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Amiga Frame Buffers
Summary: Billions and Billions of pixels
Message-ID: <125970@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 6 Oct 89 23:50:04 GMT
References: <438@crash.cts.com> <10853@dasys1.UUCP> <1368@mcrware.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM
Lines: 34



>
>
>When I was at the World of
>Commodore last month one of Commodore's reps said they will be going with
>24 bits of color.  This will give it 4 billion colors on the screen at one
>time.
>						sterling@dasys1


Does this mean that there is going to be a "SUPER-DUPER HIRES MODE"
that will display 4 billion pixels? How else can they get 4 billion
colors on the screen AT ONE TIME??? :^)
                     ^^^^^^^^^^^


Seriously, Isn't 2^24 somthing closer to 16 million.  This probably
is the number of colors they are going to use in the pallette.  They
are probably going to have a smaller number of bitplanes.  If they
use 8 bitplanes, then they could get up to 256 colors on the screen
at once (but each of these colors could be chosen from the pallete
of 16 million).  The current pallette on the Amiga is 12 bits which
gives us a selection of 4096 colors. Of course, If this new framebuffer
suports HAM mode, then you could get as many colors as there are pixels
on the screen.

What I would like to see is a 12 bit framebuffer with a 24 bit pallette.
You could get some pretty darn good high quality images with that!  Of
course, It would need some kind of acceleration ( can you imagine a
12 bit workbench on an unaccelerated MC68000 Amiga )


-Ray