What is a “pipe and what is the difference between a single and multipipe system?
A “pipe” in this context refers to the software structures, buffers, and the state of the graphics hardware associated with each single window into an application. It also refers to the data that is placed into those structures by the application which owns the pipe, and by the system tasked with maintaining the integrity of the pipe. A single piped system shares critical resources and, if multiple applications are being run at the same time, operations which are started by an application must be allowed to run to completion before a new application is allowed to get control of the pipe. The overhead of running multiple applications in a single piped system can result in very poor performance and high latency in response to user input. Each application in a multipipe system has its own distinct pipe to the graphics hardware. There is a price to pay in ram usage and a very slight price to pay in computer overhead to manage the multiple pipes, but the overall positive effect on system pe
