regen : Java Glossary

by Roedy Green ©1996-2009 Canadian Mind Products
index page for letter ⇒ punctuation 0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z (all)

regen

the re-generate buffer. The regen buffer is some high speed, usually dual-ported RAM, that lives on your video adapter card. It contains the bits representing the image currently showing on screen. Your CPU can adjust the bits to change the image. About 70 times a second, the video card examines the buffer and sends the bits to the monitor, in a raster scan. That is why you want dual ported RAM for speed, so CPU and the refresh process don’t interfere with each other.

Modern video processors are specialised and extremely fast, designed for gaming animations. They can generate images, and shuffle pieces around, inserting offscreen regen-resident images. Java’s VolatileImage class let’s you put offscreen images inside the hardware regen buffer then blast them onscreen much faster than usual. The super-fast, wide-path video processor moven the bits which are already in the regen; they don’t have to be brought it from the outside standard RAM.

Sun’s Javadoc on the VolatileImage class : available:

on the web at java.sun.com
in the current JDK 1.6.0_11 or in the old JDK 1.5.0_17 on your local Windows J: drive.

graphics adapter
Image
RAM

	Please email your feedback for publication, errors, omissions, broken/redirected link reports and suggestions to improve this page to Roedy Green :
	Canadian Mind Products
	mindprod.com IP:[65.110.21.43]
	Your face IP:[38.103.63.62]	The information on this page is for non-military use only.
	You are visitor number 2,101.	Military use includes use by defence contractors.
	You can get a fresh copy of this page from:	or possibly from your local J: drive (Java virtual drive/mindprod.com website mirror)
	http://mindprod.com/jgloss/regen.html	J:\mindprod\jgloss\regen.html