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## Chapter 24
Parallel Processing with the VGA

### Taking on Graphics Memory Four Bytes at a Time

This heading refers to the ability of the VGA chip to manipulate up to four bytes of display memory at once. In particular, the VGA provides four ALUs (Arithmetic Logic Units) to assist the CPU during display memory writes, and this hardware is a tremendous resource in the task of manipulating the VGA’s sizable frame buffer. The ALUs are actually only one part of the surprisingly complex data flow architecture of the VGA, but since they’re involved in almost all memory access operations, they’re a good place to begin.

### VGA Programming: ALUs and Latches

I’m going to begin our detailed tour of the VGA at the heart of the flow of data through the VGA: the four ALUs built into the VGA’s Graphics Controller (GC) circuitry. The ALUs (one for each display memory plane) are capable of ORing, ANDing, and XORing CPU data and display memory data together, as well as masking off some or all of the bits in the data from affecting the final result. All the ALUs perform the same logical operation at any given time, but each ALU operates on a different display memory byte.

Recall that the VGA has four display memory planes, with one byte in each plane at any given display memory address. All four display memory bytes operated on are read from and written to the same address, but each ALU operates on a byte that was read from a different plane and writes the result to that plane. This arrangement allows four display memory bytes to be modified by a single CPU write (which must often be preceded by a single CPU read, as we will see). The benefit is vastly improved performance; if the CPU had to select each of the four planes in turn via OUTs and perform the four logical operations itself, VGA performance would slow to a crawl.

Figure 24.1 is a simplified depiction of data flow around the ALUs. Each ALU has a matching latch, which holds the byte read from the corresponding plane during the last CPU read from display memory, even if that particular plane wasn’t the plane that the CPU actually read on the last read access. (Only one byte can be read by the CPU with a single display memory read; the plane supplying the byte is selected by the Read Map register. However, the bytes at the specified address in all four planes are always read when the CPU reads display memory, and those four bytes are stored in their respective latches.)

Each ALU logically combines the byte written by the CPU and the byte stored in the matching latch, according to the settings of bits 3 and 4 of the Data Rotate register (and the Bit Mask register as well, which I’ll cover next time), and then writes the result to display memory. It is most important to understand that neither ALU operand comes directly from display memory. The temptation is to think of the ALUs as combining CPU data and the contents of the display memory address being written to, but they actually combine CPU data and the contents of the last display memory location read, which need not be the location being modified. The most common application of the ALUs is indeed to modify a given display memory location, but doing so requires a read from that location to load the latches before the write that modifies it. Omission of the read results in a write operation that logically combines CPU data n with whatever data happens to be in the latches from the last read, which is normally undesirable.

Figure 24.1 VGA ALU data flow.

Occasionally, however, the independence of the latches from the display memory location being written to can be used to great advantage. The latches can be used to perform 4-byte-at-a-time (one byte from each plane) block copying; in this application, the latches are loaded with a read from the source area and written unmodified to the destination area. The latches can be written unmodified in one of two ways: By selecting write mode 1 (for an example of this, see the last chapter), or by setting the Bit Mask register to 0 so only the latched bits are written.

The latches can also be used to draw a fairly complex area fill pattern, with a different bit pattern used to fill each plane. The mechanism for this is as follows: First, generate the desired pattern across all planes at any display memory address. Generating the pattern requires a separate write operation for each plane, so that each plane’s byte will be unique. Next, read that memory address to store the pattern in the latches. The contents of the latches can now be written to memory any number of times by using either write mode 1 or the bit mask, since they will not change until a read is performed. If the fill pattern does not require a different bit pattern for each plane—that is, if the pattern is black and white—filling can be performed more easily by simply fanning the CPU byte out to all four planes with write mode 0. The set/reset registers can be used in conjunction with fanning out the data to support a variety of two-color patterns. More on this in Chapter 25.

The sample program in Listing 24.1 fills the screen with horizontal bars, then illustrates the operation of each of the four ALU logical functions by writing a vertical 80-pixel-wide box filled with solid, empty, and vertical and horizontal bar patterns over that background using each of the functions in turn. When observing the output of the sample program, it is important to remember that all four vertical boxes are drawn with exactly the same code—only the logical function that is in effect differs from box to box.

All graphics in the sample program are done in black-and-white by writing to all planes, in order to show the operation of the ALUs most clearly. Selective enabling of planes via the Map Mask register and/or set/reset would produce color effects; in that case, the operation of the logical functions must be evaluated on a plane-by-plane basis, since only the enabled planes would be affected by each operation.

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Graphics Programming Black Book © 2001 Michael Abrash