Alphanumeric Television Interface Controller (ANTIC) is an LSI ASIC dedicated to generating 2D computer graphics to be shown on a television screen or computer display. Under the direction of Jay Miner, the chip was designed in 1977-1978 by Joe Decuir, Francois Michel, and Steve Smith for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers first released in 1979 and was patented by Atari, Inc. in 1981. ANTIC is also used in the 1982 Atari 5200 video game console, which shares most of the same hardware as the 8-bit computers. For every frame of video, ANTIC reads a program of instructions to define the playfield, or background graphics, then delivers a data stream to the companion CTIA or GTIA chip which adds color and overlays sprites (referred to as "Player/Missile graphics" by Atari). Each ANTIC instruction corresponds to either blank scan lines or one of 14 graphics modes used for a horizontal band of the display. The height of each band depends on the mode. A full program, or display list in Atari parlance, specifies the entire display built from a stack of individual modes. The display list also specifies where the data for each row comes from. For character modes, the base address of the character bitmaps themselves is stored in an on-chip register and can be changed. Display list instructions can also enable horizontal and vertical fine scrolling and mark that an interrupt should occur. An interrupt allows arbitrary 6502 code to execute, usually to change display-related settings in the middle of a frame. Atari computer magazine Antic was named after the chip. Features The list below describes ANTIC's inherent hardware capabilities meaning the intended functionality of the hardware by itself, not including results achieved by CPU-serviced interrupts or display kernels frequently driving register changes. ANTIC uses DMA to read a program called the display list which specifies these playfield features: 14 different graphics modes 6 character modes 4 types of font/glyph rendering 8 bitmapped modes Output a variable number of blank scan lines Playfield Text and Map modes can be mixed onscreen Variable screen height up to vertical overscan Horizontal and Vertical coarse scrolling Identify sections of the display subject to Horizontal and/or Vertical Fine scrolling Trigger a CPU-serviced interrupt routine, called the "Display List Interrupt", at specific scan lines (also called "raster interrupt" or "Horizontal Blank Interrupt" on other systems) Trigger a CPU-serviced interrupt routine, called the "Vertical