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Zen of Graphics Programming, 2nd Edition Zen of Graphics Programming, 2nd Edition
by Michael Abrash
Coriolis, The Coriolis Group
ISBN: 1883577896   Pub Date: 04/01/96

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The Macro Assembler

The code in this book is written in both C and assembly. I think C is a good development environment, but I believe that often the best code (although not necessarily the easiest to write or the most reliable) is written in assembly. This is especially true of graphics code for the x86 family, given segments, the string instructions, and the asymmetric and limited register set, and for real-time programming of a complex board like the VGA, there’s really no other choice for the lowest-level code.

Before I’m deluged with protests from C devotees, let me add that the majority of my productive work is done in C; no programmer is immune to the laws of time, and C is simply a more time-efficient environment in which to develop, particularly when working in a programming team. In this book, however, we’re after the sine qua non of PC graphics—performance—and we can’t get there from here without a fair amount of assembly language.

Now that we know what the VGA looks like in broad strokes and have a sense of what VGA programming is like, we can start looking at specific areas in depth. In the next chapter, we’ll take a look at the hardware assistance the VGA provides the CPU during display memory access. There are four latches and four ALUs in those chips, along with some useful masks and comparators, and it’s that hardware that’s the difference between sluggish performance and making the VGA get up and dance.


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