Although only four colours are supported by the hardware the screen map accessed by user processes has sixteen different "colours" available hence each byte holds two pixels. The screen memory is made available through mmap(2) and is 2K long. The kernel handles converting this format into the much more complex format used by the hardware.

The display is updated approximately 38 times a second because it is synchronised to the audio.

The player software _generally_ uses less than 40% of CPU power while playing at the moment (including displaying one visual). However, at some points (e.g. during caching, track skipping etc.) it can use much more.

I'd like to see a fractal zoomer, particularly if zooming was dependent on the music too. I'm sure you already know not to use floating point since there is no FP hardware :-)

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Mike Crowe
I may not be speaking on behalf of empeg above :-)