Sasha Ostojic has posted on the NVidia blog about his contributions to the NVidia Optimus, including another neat (but eerily quiet) video, and discusses the new hardware that makes it a reality.
We needed hardware support to quickly move the graphics data around in the system, so we created a fast copy engine. The Optimus Copy Engine is a new alternative to traditional DMA (Direct Memory Access) transfers between the GPU frame buffer memory and system memory used by the IGP. With Optimus we also removed multiplexers, called MUXs, so we use the integrated graphics as a display adapter or pass through. The discrete GPU can do the heavy lifting and pass through the results to the integrated graphics chip to be displayed.
Be sure to read our coverage of the NVidia Optimus as well, including a promo video from NVidia showing a great side-by-side comparison of existing switchable graphics and the new Optimus.
