On 3/27/2000, 3dfx announced their acquisition of Gigapixel Corporation. According to the press release
"GigaPixel specializes in the design, development and licensing of 3D core technology. Designed to dramatically reduce the memory bandwidth and high gate count designs traditionally required for 3D acceleration, the GigaPixel technology for the first time enables high quality 3D display capabilities in low power, cost sensitive environments. ". Does the low-power comment indicate the potential for future notebook (onboard or Cardbus) 3dfx accelerators?
Read on for more info and answers to my specific questions and Bryan Speece (3dfx's Director of Macintosh Business Development) comments on what the Gigapixel acquisition means for the future.
Q&A with 3dfx/Gigapixel on Notebook Chip Possibilities: I sent a series of Questions to 3dfx/Gigapixel and received the following answers:
- Are there any definite plans for a notebook 3d graphics chip?
"We are not announcing future product plans at this time. We can tell you that the architecture, low-power and low cost make the forthcoming solution attractive to a multitude of OEMs for use in PC and laptop products."
- If so, what would be an estimate of when it would be available to OEM's?
"Expect to see new products resulting from the combined technologies in about 12-18 months."
- If you do have a portable chip in mind, what do you realistically estimate the
performance would be compared to the ATI Rage128 Mobility?
"Ahahahahahhahahaha --- they will be left in the dust. It will be beyond anything anyone has seen in a portable device."
- There has only been one PCMCIA based video card that I'm aware of -
the IXmicro Road Rocket (company is now RIP). It was a large card, running
a PCI based graphics chip with large heatsink and used an external monitor. Poor
performance and Mac only drivers didn't help sales, but it was an interesting concept.
(Despite the name, the IX3D even in PCI form had very poor 3D).
With Gigapixel's technology - would it be practical to offer a cardbus based accelerator?
Or would the limits of cardbus be too great to overcome? (Even 640x480, 16bit gaming
would be welcome to many owners of ATI RageLT or lesser chips, which is about 80+%
of all notebook owners PC and Mac alike).
"There were two problems with the IX3D solution as outlined by your question. The Gigapixel technology addresses both power and memory constraints. However, in the not too distant future, we will start to see titles which will have high enough geometry complexity that Cardbus could become a bottleneck."
3dfx/Gigapixel Conference Call Tidbits: Here's a list of some of the
more interesting tidbits from the conference call (2nd go round). Despite wearing out the 1-4 buttons , I was never able to ask a personal question (apparently the queue was too deep and time ran out).
- Comments were made that one goal is to beat the Xbox in graphics
performance (with a personal computer) 6 months before the Xbox would be released.
- Estimated 8-12 months before products with merged 3dfx/Gigapixel technology would
be at retail (after Rampage). (Combination of the best of both 3dfx and Gigapixel technologies.)
- Theoretical performance - 'orders of magnitude' better than any
existing technology currently in production (including the VSA100 cards).
- Gigapixel's focus is different than 3dfx's current market (high end graphics, high power).
They are targeting 'Visual Communications', 3d small form factor displays, PDAs and even cell phones. Gigapixel looking to 'Expand Markets' vs. carving niches.
- "Apple will be excited" at the performance but no definite details or agreements to date.
- Question was asked if the choice of nVidia for the Xbox had any effect on the acquisition. Answer was no, but Gigapixel speculated that if the acquisition has been a month ago, perhaps they might have gotten the nod for Xbox.
- Gigapixel technology has been licensed to other companies (no specific names
were mentioned). This licensing is not affected by the acquisition.
- There were some comments on Microsoft's interest in investing in Gigapixel
(even though they chose nVidia for the Xbox graphics chip)
- $186M spent on Gigapixel, return to profitability expected Q2 or later.
Gigapixel also brings cash they said.
My question (and I've asked 3dfx via email already) is if there are any definite plans for a notebook graphics chip and if so, what level of performance is estimated (compared to say the ATI Rage128 Mobility). This may be a premature question, but I know everyone's dying to know.
3Dfx's Bryan Speece Comments on GigaPixel Benefits: As I'm sure most of you already know, Bryan is 3dfx's Director of Macintosh Business Development. He replied to my emails about what the Gigapixel deal means for the future:
"The announcement of the acquisition of GigaPixel yesterday adds remarkable technology for low-power, high-performance, licensable cores to our already impressive portfolio.
Initially this means the potential licensing of highly efficient 3D graphics technology. Technology that can provide very high performance levels while consuming very little power.
In the future it will mean that 3dfx continues to produce the very highest performing graphics solutions at the very best prices. GP's technology can effectively allow the reduction of necessary memory bandwidth by a factor of 10. This will allow 32-bit full-scene anti-aliased rendering at unbelievable performance levels. As the state of the art in graphics technology moves forward processing is not the issue - that's a given - memory bandwidth will be the gate. GP's "chunking" capability will be assimilated into a strong 3dfx roadmap that already promises superior fill-rate, FSAA, FXT1, T-Buffer and more.
What does this mean to the Mac market? A lot of that depends on Apple. The PowerMac is the only machine that currently allows the user to choose a graphics solution. Even in that case the user is forced to pay for an ATI Rage 128 board with his CPU purchase. With all other product lines Apple completely controls the integrated graphics capability which is supplied to the purchaser. And the purchaser has no recourse.
For our part we'll continue to develop and market the best graphics technologies on earth and make them available as broadly as we can. The rest is up to Apple.
In the future, when you think of 3dfx, think of the technologies that will enable tomorrow's 3D visual communications: SLI (scaleable architecture), FSAA (hardware full-scene anti-aliasing), FXT1 (superior texture compression), T-Buffer (cinematic effects), "Chunking" and more. All offered in the broadest array of solutions - from licensable core to board level - from high-power static designs to low power portable ones.
-Bryan
"
It looks to be a very interesting year ahead. Stay tuned...
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