swapchain

A rotating queue of images the GPU draws into and then hands to the display one at a time.

To show animation smoothly, a renderer draws the next frame into one image while the screen displays another, then swaps them. The swapchain is that managed set of presentable images tied to a surface. Cycling through several images (double or triple buffering) avoids showing half-drawn frames and keeps the GPU and display from stalling on each other.