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Unified memory was introduced by SGI with the O2 workstation in 1996, then they used it again with their x86 workstations SGI 320 and 540 in 1999. So it was a w
by wazoox 4y ago
Unified memory was introduced by SGI with the O2 workstation in 1996, then they used it again with their x86 workstations SGI 320 and 540 in 1999. So it was a workstation-class technology before being a mobile one :)
- andrekandre 4y agoeven the n64 had unified memory way back in 1995
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoN64 chip was also SGI designed
- djmips 4y agoThen that SGI team broke out to form ArtX, developed the GameCube hardware, then were snatched up by ATI and went on to form the foundation of ATI, now AMD GPUs
- nwallin 4y agoThe N64's unified memory model had a pretty big asterisk though. The system had only 4kB for textures out of 4MB of total RAM. And textures are what uses the most memory in a lot of games.
- klodolph 4y agoThat’s a somewhat misleading way to describe it. The N64 has 4K texture memory (TMEM), but you can use far more than 4K of texture during a frame—because you can load data into TMEM as many times as you like during a frame. In practice, you might think of TMEM like it’s a cache, it’s just that you have to manage this cache manually. You can use as much RAM as you like for textures. TMEM is also not part of main RAM, like the RSP’s DMEM and IMEM.