Viewing & Rendering

A Digression: Graphics Hardware Architecture

Each intersection of the grid lines on a computer screen is called a pixel, from "picture element." Pictures on the screen are stored in an array of values in a "frame buffer."
When the pixel values are restricted to one bit (short for "binary digit") they have values of either 0 or 1, as in a black & white image. Such an array is called a bitmap.
A screen representation with more than two choices for each pixel is called a pixmap from "pixel map."
Picture data (bitmaps and pixmaps) are stored in frame buffers (part of the computer's hardware).
Some standard screen sizes are 480 x 640 (IBM PC) and 1024 x 1280 (workstation)-- i.e., over a million pixels/frame.

Generated with CERN WebMaker