Swap chain
A queue of frame buffers the GPU renders into and the display reads from, where swapping between them keeps a half-drawn frame from ever reaching the screen.
At least two buffers take part: a front buffer that is being shown and a back buffer that is being drawn. When the frame is finished the chain swaps them — either by copying (a blit) or by redirecting the display's read (a page flip). Three buffers (see triple buffering) let the GPU start the next frame without waiting for the previous one to finish being shown.
The present mode sets the trade-off between tearing and latency: immediate shows at once and tears, FIFO syncs to the scan-out (see vsync), mailbox keeps the latest finished frame and drops older ones. The concept is explicit in modern APIs — DXGI's swap chain in DirectX and VkSwapchainKHR in Vulkan.