Choose your vendors carefully; your application may have different priorities from those of a graphics subsystem that targets a different use. The graphics manufacturers' slow but sure incorporation of functions that originally ran in software on the CPU may end within the geometry pipeline. Silicon innovations are meaningless if content developers and application-programming interfaces don't support them. When deciding on a CPU-to-graphics subsystem interconnection, make sure you calculate worst-case bandwidth requirements to avoid periodic reductions in frame rate. Exotic memory technologies most easily find homes in performance-starved graphics frame and texture buffers. Parallel processing, both within a chip and among multiple chips, helps overcome bottlenecks at the front and back ends of the graphics pipeline.
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