Ibm TIGA softwrae

TIGA

By contrast with IBM’s 8514/A, TIGA  is a software standard  produced  by Texas  instruments (hens Texas Instruments  Graphics Architecture or TIGA)  that can be used by  any manufacturers to produce  and intelligent graphics board.

Although TIGA is an open standard, it is  specifically designed  to work with  boards designed  around Texas‘s graphics co-processor chips, the 34010 and 34020. Each of these chips  is a full and powerful microprocessor in its own right. The  34010 is a 16-bit version  of the 32-bit  34020. Most TIGA  boards are  based  on the  34010 but the more expensive 34020  has the advantage  of being  roughly  five times faster.

TIGA is best  regarded as a  graphics programming language  designed to run on the  34010 or the 34020. In  principle any  software that has a  TIGA driver  can use any  TIGA board irrespective  of its  exact design or  manufacturer. TIGA is also  resolution independent. That this means is that if graphics  hardware improves  to offer increased  resolution this can be   taken advantage  of by the  existing software.  The reason is  that TIGA  commands  take the form of  ‘draw  a circle  of radius   r centered at x,y’ and make to no mention  of how accurately  this will be done – the higher  the resolution the   smoother the circle.  Because of this  resolution  independence  it doesn’t make sense  to talk of the  resolution  offered by  TIGA but currently  boards are  available that work at:

Ø  1024 x 768 in 256 colourss from a palette of up to 16 million colourss.

Ø  1280 x 256 colourss from a  palette of up to  16 million colourss

Ø  1024 x 768 in 24-bit colours