Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!usc!apple!fox!portal!cup.portal.com!Sullivan
From: Sullivan@cup.portal.com (sullivan - segall)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: new Agnus (32k x 32k blits... why?)
Message-ID: <24388@cup.portal.com>
Date: 23 Nov 89 08:36:58 GMT
References: <408@ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>
  <593@medusa.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
Distribution: na
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 27

>U3364521@ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au (Lou Cavallo) writes:
>
>>Excuse me but you did say 32Kx32K for a blit op no? How is this so, I mean why
>>is such a large blit capacity offerred? Am I correct in my interpretation that
>>1 Giga pixels may be operated on by the blitter at one time? How is this abil-
>>ity expected to be used?
>
>OK, 1 Giga pixels would be too much for use on a display, but when you
>try too render for high resolution devices (i.e. photo typesetting)
>you get up to 10k x 10k pixels on a page. And even a usual laser printer
>with 300 dpi offers 3k x 4k pixels. That exceeds the limits of the old
>Agnus.
>Thanks those who wrote the printer.device, it can handle large bitplanes.
>Now (with a new graphics.library) we can easily render it using system
>code and blitter speed. Unfortunately, I don't think that we can emulate
>these capabilities with the older Agnus.
>
Probably the best use of the new blit size is in placing screen bit planes
side by side instead of vertically in memory.  Using this scheme it will be
possible to scroll screens without any noticeable colour separation, and 
without duplicate buffering the screen.  (Magical isn't it?  Of course the
font library will have to be updated to support modulo 4096 lines, and to
find horizontally separated bitplanes correctly...)

My question for 1.4?  Has this already been implemented for the default 
boot screen?  If not, will it be supported in any manner for 1.4?
-ss