Method and apparatus for on-the-fly multiple display mode switching in high-resolution bitmapped graphics system

摘要

A RAMDAC circuit drives a display device so as display multiple modes of color depth and display resolution in a single display frame without sacrificing resolution of the higher-resolution mode, and adjusts the output pixel rate to match that of the display mode being display on a pixel-by-pixel basis. The RAMDAC circuit switches between two graphics modes on-the-fly on a pixel-by-pixel basis in accordance with mode control bits stored in the pixel data. Furthermore, the RAMDAC circuit switches between two output pixel rates such that the amount of video memory used for any predefined screen area remains constant even though the output pixel rate and resolution are dynamically adjusted. In a preferred embodiment a display mode signal is embedded in the display data such that the display data, including the mode signal, comprises one byte of data for each display pixel when the mode signal specifies the first display mode, and comprises two bytes of data for each display pixel when the mode signal specifies the second display mode.