The graphics address remapping table (GART), also known as the graphics aperture remapping table, or graphics translation table (GTT), is an I/O memory management unit (IOMMU) used by

Accelerated Graphics Port Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) is a parallel expansion card standard, designed for attaching a video card to a computer system to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics. It was originally designed as a successor to PCI-type connect ...

(AGP) and

PCI Express PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards. It is the common ...

(PCIe)

graphics card A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or mistakenly GPU) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display device, such as a computer moni ...

s. The GART allows the graphics card

direct memory access Direct memory access (DMA) is a feature of computer systems and allows certain hardware subsystems to access main system memory independently of the central processing unit (CPU). Without DMA, when the CPU is using programmed input/output, it is t ...

(DMA) to the host system memory, through which buffers of textures,

polygon mesh In 3D computer graphics and solid modeling, a polygon mesh is a collection of , s and s that defines the shape of a polyhedral object. The faces usually consist of triangles (triangle mesh), quadrilaterals (quads), or other simple convex polyg ...

es and other data are loaded.

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...

later reused the same mechanism for

I/O virtualization In virtualization, input/output virtualization (I/O virtualization) is a methodology to simplify management, lower costs and improve performance of servers in enterprise environments. I/O virtualization environments are created by abstracting the ...

with other peripherals including

disk controller {{unreferenced, date=May 2010 The disk controller is the controller circuit which enables the CPU to communicate with a hard disk, floppy disk or other kind of disk drive. It also provides an interface between the disk drive and the bus connect ...

s and

network adapter A network interface controller (NIC, also known as a network interface card, network adapter, LAN adapter or physical network interface, and by similar terms) is a computer hardware component that connects a computer to a computer network. Ear ...

s. A GART is used as a means of data exchange between the

main memory Computer data storage is a technology consisting of computer components and recording media that are used to retain digital data. It is a core function and fundamental component of computers. The central processing unit (CPU) of a computer ...

and

video memory Dynamic random-access memory (dynamic RAM or DRAM) is a type of random-access semiconductor memory that stores each bit of data in a memory cell, usually consisting of a tiny capacitor and a transistor, both typically based on metal-oxide ...

through which buffers (i.e. paging/swapping) of textures,

es and other data are loaded, but can also be used to expand the amount of video memory available for systems with only integrated or shared graphics (i.e. no discrete or inbuilt graphics processor), such as

Intel HD Graphics Intel Graphics Technology (GT) is the collective name for a series of integrated graphics processors (IGPs) produced by Intel that are manufactured on the same package or die as the central processing unit (CPU). It was first introduced in 2010 ...

processors. However, this type of memory (expansion) remapping has a caveat that affects the entire system: specifically, any GART, pre-allocated memory becomes pooled and cannot be utilised for any other purposes but graphics memory and display rendering.

Operating system support

Linux

Jeff Hartmann served as the primary maintainer of the

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ope ...

's agpgart driver, which began as part of

Brian Paul Brian E. Paul is a computer programmer who originally wrote and maintained the source code for the open source Mesa graphics library until 2012, and is still active in the project. He began writing its source code in August 1993. Mesa is a free ...

Utah GLX Utah GLX was a project aimed at creating a fully free and open-source basic hardware-accelerated 3D renderer using the OpenGL rendering API on Linux kernel-based operating systems. Utah GLX predates Direct Rendering Infrastructure, which is what ...

accelerated

Mesa 3D Mesa, also called Mesa3D and The Mesa 3D Graphics Library, is an open source implementation of OpenGL, Vulkan, and other graphics API specifications. Mesa translates these specifications to vendor-specific graphics hardware drivers. Its most im ...

driver project. The developers primarily targeted Linux 2.4.x kernels, but made patches available against older 2.2.x kernels. Dave Jones heavily reworked agpgart for the Linux 2.6.x kernels, along with more contributions from Jeff Hartmann.

FreeBSD

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

, the agpgart driver appeared in its 4.1 release.

Solaris

AGPgart support was introduced into Solaris Express Developer Edition as of its 7/05 release.

References

{{Reflist Graphics hardware

Operating system support

Linux

FreeBSD

Solaris

See also

References