Barnes: Debugging display problems

On his blog, Jesse Barnes has a nice description of how computer displays work in terms of the memory organization and timings, along with some tips on debugging display problems (with photos and links to videos). "There are several variables that apply: bits per pixel, indexed or not, tiling format, and color format (in the Intel case, RGB or YUV), and stride or pitch. Bits per pixel is as simple as it sounds, it simply defines how large each pixel is in bits. Indexed planes, rather than encoding the color directly in the bits for the pixel, use the value as an index into a palette table which contains a value for the color to be displayed. The tiling mode indicates the surface organization of the plane. Tiled surfaces allow for much more efficient rendering, and allowing planes to use them directly can save copies from tiled rendering targets to an un-tiled display plane. Finally, the color format defines what values the pixels represent."

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