Using part of main memory for the display system's frame buffers, which temporarily hold the rendered content being sent to the screen. Shared memory is typically used in PCs with "integrated graphics," which means the display circuits are on the motherboard rather than housed in a separate, more costly graphics card.
Sharing main memory with the display function reduces the amount of memory available to applications, and main memory is not as fast as the specialized video memory on stand-alone cards (see
video RAM). See
integrated graphics and
display adapter.