ANTIC connects with CTIA and GTIA
Alphanumeric Television Interface Controller (ANTIC) is an LSI ASIC dedicated to generating 2D computer graphics to be shown on a television screen or computer display.   Under the direction of Jay Miner, the chip was designed in 1977-1978 by Joe Decuir, Francois Michel, and Steve Smith for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers first released in 1979 and was patented by Atari, Inc. in 1981.  ANTIC is also used in the 1982 Atari 5200 video game console, which shares most of the same hardware as the 8-bit computers.
For every frame of video, ANTIC reads a program of instructions to define the playfield, or background graphics, then delivers a data stream to the companion CTIA or GTIA chip which adds color and overlays sprites (referred to as "Player/Missile graphics" by Atari). Each ANTIC instruction corresponds to either blank scan lines or one of 14 graphics modes used for a horizontal band of the display. The height of each band depends on the mode. A full program, or display list in Atari parlance, specifies the entire display built from a stack of individual modes.
The display list also specifies where the data for each row comes from. For character modes, the base address of the character bitmaps themselves is stored in an on-chip register and can be changed. Display list instructions can also enable horizontal and vertical fine scrolling and mark that an interrupt should occur. An interrupt allows arbitrary 6502 code to execute, usually to change display-related settings in the middle of a frame.
Atari computer magazine Antic was named after the chip.Display list
The display list is the list of instructions directing ANTIC how to generate the display.  The data processed by this Display List "program" is the screen memory.  The output is the graphics display.  The kinds of graphics in the output (text vs addressable pixels) is determined by the instructions in the Display List.
The display List and the display data are written into RAM by the CPU.  ANTIC reads the display List instructions, screen memory, and character set information from RAM using a technique known as direct memory access (DMA).  A BASIC or 6502 machine language program's job is to initialize the display—set up the display List instructions, organize screen memory (and character set if applicable), and then direct ANTIC to start the display.  After this, ANTIC automatically takes care of generating the screen display.  This allows the Atari 8-bit computers to produce complex, mixed-mode displays without direct CPU intervention. Other platforms, even those designed much later, cannot either mix graphics modes in one display, or do so without complex CPU interrupts.
ANTIC processes the instructions in the display List, reads the screen memory (and character set data if applicable), translates this information into a real-time stream of graphics data, and sends this data stream to the CTIA/GTIA chip which applies the color to the graphics pixels and outputs the video.  Together the two chips provide 6 text and 8 graphics modes (14 total).  The more advanced version, GTIA, adds three alternative color interpretations for each ANTIC graphics mode providing a total of 56 (14 times four) graphics modes.  However, only the ANTIC graphics modes based on half-color clock pixels are capable of expressing the complete color palette provided by the new color interpretations, and of those modes the ones convenient for use are ANTIC modes 2 (OS Graphics mode 0 text) and ANTIC mode F (OS Graphics mode 8).  Thus the reasonable number of unique graphics modes available using the inherent hardware capabilities of ANTIC + CTIA/GTIA is 20–14 ANTIC modes + 3 additional color interpretations each for ANTIC modes 2 and F.