Mapping:
The term used for the projection of a texture onto the surface of a 3D object.

 

 

MB (megabyte):
1 million bytes.

 

 

MHz (megahertz):
A megahertz is 1 million cycles per second and is used to measure computer speed.

 

 

Memory clock speed:
Speed at which the graphics memory operates.

 

 

Mip-mapping:
In 3D, many texels make up each pixel when viewing a distant texture-mapped object, so that often the textures appear aliased or distorted. Mip-mapping pre-filters the different levels of detail to find an appropriate level according to the object's distance. This sampling of textures improves rendering. Bi-linear mip-mapping selects the closest mip-map image to your pixel's level of detail and then interpolates that texture image to determine the pixel's color value. Tri-linear mip-mapping doubles the computational level, as it selects the two nearest mip-maps, interpolates both of them and then takes the average of these two values to arrive at the final screen pixel value.

 

 

Monitor frequency synchronization:
Signals sent by the graphics board to the monitor so that the monitor can synchronize with the graphics board’s active frequency. Horizontal synchronization frequency is the number of times per second that the monitor scans a horizontal line and is the most important value on your monitor. Vertical synchronization frequency is the number of times per second that the monitor moves the beam vertically. Vertical synchronization frequency is measured in Hz (cycles per second) and the horizontal value is measured in kHz (kilocycles per second). The range of values is usually between 50 and 150Hz vertically and between 30 and 135kHz horizontally.

 

 

Motion compensation:
Semi-hardware driven MPEG-2 decompression function.

 

 

Multi-buffering:
Double buffering uses two frame buffers for smooth animation. The first image is displayed and during this time the second buffer is already being exploited to build and render the second image. The buffers switch on completion, which means that only finished images are displayed resulting in a more fluid graphics animation. Triple buffering uses three frames and Quad buffering uses four.

 

 

Multi-texturing:
Several textures are mapped to the surface of one same polygon, in order to make a scene more realistic. One may, for instance, add a relief texture, combined with a lighting or fog effect, to the basic texture. With 8-layer multi-texturing, as many as eight textures can be applied to one single 3D object!