Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!rice!titan.rice.edu!foo
From: foo@titan.rice.edu (Mark Hall)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Intel graphics chip
Keywords: Intel, 586, windows
Message-ID: <1990Dec20.194956.21974@rice.edu>
Date: 20 Dec 90 19:49:56 GMT
References: <1990Dec19.115110.15070@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> <3070@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <1990Dec19.154145.10137@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
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In article <1990Dec19.154145.10137@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (Doug McDonald) writes:
)I may be -- probably am -- all wet, but I thought that the Intel and TI
)graphics chips were enitrely different bests: the TI chip was a programmable
)device for drawing graphics primitives onto a frame bufffer while the Intel
)one was, as has been described earlier in this thread, a device for
)manipulating "windows" from asveral parts of a frame buffer onto an
)actual screen.
)
)Anybody really know? Can you layer one onto the other?
)

   I should probably sit quietly by, but that would be out of character 8^)

   I wrote a large chunk of the demo software for the initial trade show
 showing the Intel 82786 (Comdex in Las Vegas, 1987? memory is failing).
 I have not looked at the chip since then. It does do some graphics 
 drawing, like drawing lines. It also, as has been noted here, manage 
 windows in hardware. 

   IMHO, the 82786 is severely limited in that it is not programmable. 
 For instance, it did not do polygon filling. To fill polygons, I wrote
 a routine to find the interior of a polygon on a scanline by scanline 
 basis (on the x86). The 82786 would draw the horizontal lines. The 
 overhead of passing the filling info to the 82786 made polygon-filling 
 less than spectacular. 

   I WAS very inpressed with the windowing support, though. 

   - mark