Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mephisto!ncar!umigw!mthvax!dnelson
From: dnelson@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (Dru Nelson)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: SLAM's
Message-ID: <1990Mar4.001743.17291@mthvax.cs.miami.edu>
Date: 4 Mar 90 00:17:43 GMT
Organization: U of Miami Dept. of Math. and Computer Science, Coral Gables, FL 33124
Lines: 21


>>	I once read an article, in BYTE I think, that described
>>	SLAMS, or Scan Line A???? Memory. Basicly, the concept was

>This sounds much like VRAMs, which are standard production items now.

 No, it was a ram chip design that had built in low level graphics functions.
 He discussed vrams in his article, though.

 The chip was an interesting design and I can't say I remember the details
 but these video chips would do functions for polygons and half-toning
 in the chip quickly.  The person designed it while he was a student at
 Stanford University and made it with MOSIS.  The article described how
 it would signifigantly speed graphics.

 The last I saw of this was in the Byte article.  The article did state
 that several semiconductor companies showed interest in the chip
 design.  

-- 
%% Dru Nelson %% Miami, FL %% Internet:  dnelson@mthvax.cs.miami.edu  %%