Post #1489172

2026-03-30 22:07 UTC

They had 8 geometry engines (first image) and either 5, 10 or 20 Fragment Generators (second image) why, yes, every FG had a copy of _the entire texture memory_

Replies (3)

@rygorous@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-03-30 22:10

Oh, also, to be clear, it's not 16 image engines _total_. It's 16 image engines _per fragment generator_, so at least 80 of them in total, "and enough framebuffer memory to allocate 256 bits per pixel to a 1280x1024 framebuffer". "Most floating point arithmetic is done in single precision, but much of the texture arithmetic, and all depth arithmetic after projection transformation, must be done in double precision to maintain the required accuracy."

Open ##1489173
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-03-30 22:17

@rygorous As we know, caches are a giant pain in the arse to design and build. So... they didn't!

Open ##1489253
@KeyJ@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-03-31 06:14

@rygorous "Every FG had a copy of the entire texture memory" was also true for the 3Dfx Voodoo 2 (or the rare dual-TMU Voodoo 1's, for that matter). The entire Voodoo Graphics architecture looks like a massively downscaled RealityEngine to be honest, which is of course no coincidence, considering who designed it.

Open ##1489255