[sldev] Re: Texture caching

[Alex Suter]

Argent Stonecutter wrote:
>> Usually because of disk space issues, in that you can rapidly fill it
>> all up.
>>
>> Could be a slick alternative implementation... trade disk space for  
>> speed.
>
> Isn't that what caching is *for*? :) :) :) :)

You bet your bippy. ;)  I guess we're talking about the magnitude of 
disk space used.
500GB versus 50GB versus 256mb video memory.

Has anyone compared the relative costs of a cache miss versus image 
decoding time?
I would speculate that having a huge (carefully indexed, persistent 
across multiple
teleports) compressed cache would be perceived as faster than an also 
huge, but with
less cached textures, uncompressed cache.

With Jason's multiple levels of cache, a sweet spot could probably be 
programmatically
found.

Armchair quarterback,
Alex