4 ms·
No the concept is not entirely new, especially since historically, wasting CPU cycles was often cheaper than adding framebuffer RAM. The c. 1977 Atari 2600 wor
by Jeema101 5y ago
No the concept is not entirely new, especially since historically, wasting CPU cycles was often cheaper than adding framebuffer RAM.
The c. 1977 Atari 2600 worked in a very similar way, wasting 80+% of the CPU time just to draw the screen. That was seen as a good trade-off back then since the games were simple and not typically doing much else with those CPU cycles.
- Someone 5y agoI think the trade-off was more cost than “we don’t know what we would do with these cycles” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_Interface_Adaptor#Background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_Interface_Adaptor#B...) If you look at https://www.jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm https://www.jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm, 1kB RAM cost about $25-$50 at the time. The Atari 2600 sold for $199. The 6502 CPU, at $25 was too expensive for that (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600#MOS_Technology_6502/6507 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600#MOS_Technology_6502...)
- jandrese 5y agoOf course this means the game had to be simple because there simply wasn't enough CPU time available to do anything complex.