Re: memory efficient compisiting

On Tue, 2004-03-02 at 19:01, Jon Smirl wrote: 
> 
> Building a screen with transparent windows requires that the contents all of the
> windows be available. But large windows on a 1280x1024x32 screen can take 5MB of
> memory each. That's a lot of VRAM to waste for command line. Refetching a
> window's contents over a network will also take a lot of time. 

What would have to fetch them over the network?

> If one of the transparent windows contains video the composition process 
> is continuous. 

I wonder if things couldn't be fast enough to composite once per refresh
even with offscreen memory thrashing though?

> 1) keep non-performance sensitive windows in AGP space, but I'm not sure 
> the Radeon can address huge (256MB) amounts of AGP memory. 

I haven't seen anything to suggest that it can't. Also, IIRC I've seen
you argue before that cards with GBs of video RAM are imminent. :)


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer      |     Debian (powerpc), X and DRI developer
Libre software enthusiast    |   http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=daenzer