US Patent 6856320 Demand-based memory system for graphics applications

A memory system and methods of operating the same that drastically increase the efficiency in memory use and allocation in graphics systems. In a graphics system using a tiled architecture, instead of pre-allocating a fixed amount of memory for each tile, the invention dynamically allocates varying amounts of memory per tile depending on the demand. In one embodiment all or a portion of the available memory is divided into smaller pages that are preferably equal in size. Memory allocation is done by page based on the amount of memory required for a given tile.