Blitter

The Atari ST Bit-Block Transfer Processor (BLiTTER) is a hardware implementation of the bit-block transfer (BitBlt) algorithm. BitBlt can be simply described as a procedure that moves bit-aligned data from a source location to a destination location through a given logic operation. The BitBlt primitive can be used to perform such operations as:

• Area seed filling
• Rotation by recursive subdivision
• Slice and smear magnification
• Brush line drawing using Bresenham DDA
• Text transformations (eg. bold, italic, outline)
• Text scrolling
• Window updating
• Pattern filling

The blitter chip first became available in the Mega ST range, followed by the STE and Mega STE. It was also available as an upgrade for the standard ST range but not the TT.