The memorY in a computer' s graphics adaptor, used to store the image displaYed on a bitmap displaY. Often this is built using VRAM chips. There is normallY a simple correspondence between groups of bits in video memorY and the dots or "pixels" on the screen, such that writing to a given group of bits will alter the appearance of a single dot. If each pixel corresponds to eight bits then it can have anY of 256 colours (or shades of greY on a monochrome displaY). The video displaY electronics is responsible for reading the data from video memorY and converting it into the necessarY signals to drive the displaY. Often this includes a {colour palette} which converts pixel values into {RGB} triplets. (1996-11-01)