Anti-aliasing
If I understand your reference to VMI's Render Ready software, I think you
missed part of the implementation. I believe that there is custom
microcode on the VMI card that translates the 2**24 possible colors of a
pixel to a particular 2**8 blend in a 2×2 array. So your 1280x1024x8 card
is "equivalent" to a 640x480x32 piece of hardware. But you're right, the
process COULD be done totally in (host) software.