This should shed some light!
Monday July 13, 8:04 am Eastern Time
Company Press Release
SOURCE: 3Dlabs, Inc.
3Dlabs Announces PERMEDIA 3 Graphics Processor
Forthcoming 128-bit device to process up to 250 million texels-per-second; Single-chip design includes Virtual
Texturing and extensive DirectX 6 functionality
SAN JOSE, Calif., July 13 /PRNewswire/ -- 3Dlabs(R), Inc. (Nasdaq: TDDDF - news) today announced the details of its forthcoming
PERMEDIA(R) 3 graphics processor, its next-generation device in the award-winning PERMEDIA family, which integrates 2D, 3D,
digital video and VGA processing in a high- performance, single-chip design. Processing up to 250 million texels-per-second while
rendering dual-textured polygons in a single pass, the PERMEDIA 3 design is expected to deliver comprehensive acceleration for
Microsoft(R) DirectX(R) 6 multimedia API -- providing fast gameplay while boosting 2D, video and 3D Windows application
performance. 3Dlabs has completed design of the PERMEDIA 3 and expects to sample and ship the device during the second half of
1998.
3Dlabs today also announced the formation of its Desktop Products Strategic Business Unit. James Carrington, formerly director of
marketing at 3Dlabs, will become vice president of desktop products. The Desktop Business Unit will develop and market merchant
chip-level products for the mainstream Windows(R) 95/98- and Direct3D(R)-based PC graphics markets, including the high-performance
and consumer segments. This new business unit is chartered to enhance the positioning and sales of 3Dlabs' PERMEDIA products in the
mainstream PC graphics marketplace.
The PERMEDIA 3 will be manufactured in a 456-pin BGA package using a state-of-the-art 0.25 micron silicon process. The device is
expected to be priced at approximately $45 for quantities of 100,000 units per month once it enters into production and will be available
solely from 3Dlabs. The Company does not expect to derive revenues from PERMEDIA 3 until Q4 98.
Quotes
''The PERMEDIA 3 architecture is the result of a dedicated development effort by 3Dlabs to deliver a complete, single-chip,
high-performance accelerator for DirectX 6,'' said Osman Kent, president and CEO of 3Dlabs. ''We expect the projected performance
and feature set of this latest-generation PERMEDIA processor will position 3Dlabs as a contender in the PC performance desktop and
high-end gaming graphics markets by offering what OEMs and end-users have been looking for: high 3D fill rates, sustainable special
effects, fast 2D and DVD playback with support for multiple displays, digital flat-panels and advanced video options.''
''We are excited to see that 3Dlabs is planning to offer such a comprehensive set of the functionality exposed by our DirectX APIs in
PERMEDIA 3,'' said Kevin Bachus, product manager for DirectX at Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT - news). ''The availability
of powerful hardware acceleration like the PERMEDIA 3 will allow developers to include more impressive special effects, such as
bump-mapping, high-quality filtering and multi-texturing in their Windows applications. As a result, we believe Windows users can look
forward to a greatly enhanced interactive gaming experience.''
''PERMEDIA 3 will place 3Dlabs directly in the mainstream 3D market with a leading-edge part that leverages its hardware and software
technology across the GLINT(R) product family and prior generations of PERMEDIA,'' said John Latta, industry analyst at Fourth
Wave.
''Together with 3Dlabs, we have successfully delivered high-performance graphics products based on PERMEDIA 2 to our OEM
commercial customers, including Dell and Fujitsu,'' said David Watkins, vice president and general manager of the visual systems at
Diamond Multimedia (Nasdaq: DIMD - news). ''We are excited by the innovative technology and complete DirectX 6 feature set
designed by 3Dlabs to be part of PERMEDIA 3 and we look forward to continuing to work closely with 3Dlabs to offer the next
generation of PERMEDIA technology to our customers.''
''ELSA selected PERMEDIA 2 to enter the commercial desktop and entry level workstation markets based on our GLoria(TM) Synergy
graphics accelerator. Among others, we have enjoyed design wins with leading PC OEMs such as Compaq and HP,'' said Thomas
Neubert, vice president of sales and marketing at ELSA, Inc. ''We are confident that the advanced PERMEDIA 3 technology will allow
us to continue our growth in those market segments.''
''PERMEDIA 3's expected ability to perform intricate 3D features in a single pass with stunning visual quality will continue the success
of the award-winning PERMEDIA product line,'' said Nathan Bozeman, executive director of product marketing for STB Systems
(Nasdaq: STBI - news). ''Its support of OpenGL(R) and DirectX 6.0 features will position PERMEDIA 3 as a strong offering in the
commercial and consumer 3D graphics markets.''
''The PERMEDIA 2 already enables acceleration of 3D-intensive games, such as Forsaken, at high resolution,'' said Shawn Rosen,
producer of Forsaken at Acclaim Entertainment, Inc. (Nasdaq: AKLM - news). ''Developers can only expect more from the
new-generation PERMEDIA hardware, which is expected to offer unique DirectX 6 features including Virtual Texturing and single-pass
multiple textures. Gamers will finally be able to experience fluent game play and to truly immerse themselves in a stunning visual world.''
''3Dlabs' PERMEDIA 2 has been an excellent platform for OpenGL- and Direct3D-based games,'' said Eric Demilt, producer of
Stonekeep II and Fallout 2 at InterPlay Productions. (Nasdaq: IPLY - news). ''With increasing support for DirectX 6 from advanced 3D
hardware, including the PERMEDIA 3, we will be able to produce even more mind-blowing titles without worrying about acceleration
bottlenecks.''
''Our development teams here at Rage have always enjoyed working alongside our colleagues at 3Dlabs, with whom we share an ongoing
commitment to stunning 3D gameplay,'' said John Heap, head of development at Rage Software. ''3Dlabs first revealed its dedication to
32-bit color rendering with PERMEDIA 2 and this will be enhanced with the addition of 32-bit Z-buffering in PERMEDIA 3. With this
and the many other expected innovations in PERMEDIA 3, we very much look forward to continuing a successful long-term relationship
with 3Dlabs.''
PERMEDIA 3 Technical Information
PERMEDIA 3's 3D architecture is designed to process advanced visual effects in a single cycle, including bump-mapping with surface
textures. PERMEDIA 3 is currently the only announced single-chip design capable of this level of projected performance. With a 128-bit
high-bandwidth memory interface, PERMEDIA 3 will also apply two bilinear-filtered textures or a per- pixel tri-linear mip-mapped texture
in a single cycle with Z-buffering, alpha- blending, stenciling, fogging and blending enabled.
PERMEDIA 3 is expected to provide performance that is well-matched with today's CPU technology and will scale in performance with
faster processors expected in 1999. PERMEDIA 3 is designed to accept polygon commands at a peak rate of eight million per second,
and to provide approximately up to six times the gameplay performance of PERMEDIA 2 when applying multiple textures to rendered
polygons.
Additionally, PERMEDIA 3 is expected to be the first graphics processor to offer Virtual Texturing -- a capability that automatically
manages optimal placement of textures in system and local graphics memory. The PERMEDIA 3 architecture incorporates a
demand-page texture sub-system that causes a dedicated DMA unit to download 256x256 pages of textures to local memory when they
are first accessed. This will allow software developers to straightforwardly load all textures into system memory, while the hardware
autonomously maintains an optimal working set of texture pages cached in available local graphics memory for maximum performance.
Virtual Texturing will allow execution of textures from system memory in PCI, as well as AGP systems, provides optimized use of
backplane bandwidth and avoids local texture memory fragmentation through virtual to physical texture address mapping.
To offload the host CPU, the PERMEDIA 3 architecture incorporates an enhanced Delta floating point setup engine with multiple texture
perspective calculations and polygon culling in hardware, and is designed to directly process native Direct3D buffers, including Flexible
Vertex formats.
To deliver high-quality images, the PERMEDIA 3 architecture has been designed to provide full-scene anti-aliasing and is optimized for
true color display and will support a high-resolution 32-bit Z-buffer, as well as non-linear 16- and 24-bit Z-buffers, an 8-bit stencil and an
8-bit destination alpha buffer.
The PERMEDIA 3 design incorporates a complete AGP 2X implementation, with full sideband and texture execute functionality.
PERMEDIA 3 will also be 100% PCI 2.2- and PC98-compatible.
PERMEDIA 3 is designed to support from 4 to 16 Mbytes of local memory for driving high-resolution displays and will be able to utilize
SDRAM or SGRAM at speeds up to 200MHz. SDRAM and SGRAM designs will be able to use the same software drivers.
Incorporating a 270MHz RAMDAC, PERMEDIA 3 is designed to drive true color refresh rates as high as 137Hz at 1280x1024
resolution, 96Hz at 1600x1200 resolution and 90Hz at 1920x1080 resolution. PERMEDIA 3 architecture also features a 24-bit digital
pixel port, capable of driving high-resolution digital flat panel displays when used with a PanelLink(TM)- compatible transmitter or when
using alternative proprietary schemes.
High-quality software DVD playback will be accelerated by PERMEDIA 3's PC98-compliant video core designed to offload significant
processing from the host CPU, including MPEG-2 motion compensation, YUV-RGB colorspace conversion and arbitrary XY scaling
with bi-linear filtering. Two on-chip 80 Mbyte/second VIP video ports will allow PERMEDIA 3 to interface with external video
hardware.
In addition to DirectX 6 and Direct3D 6, PERMEDIA 3 will support a wide range of highly-optimized drivers such as an OpenGL
Installable Client Driver, as well as 2D drivers for Windows NT(R) 4.0, Windows 95 and Windows 98.
About 3Dlabs
Founded in 1994, 3Dlabs is a leading innovator and a fabless supplier of high-performance graphics semiconductors, software and related
technologies designed to bring cost-effective 2D and 3D graphics to the personal computer. The Company has introduced eight 3D
graphics processors over the last four years with price, performance and functionality designed to meet the demand for 3D on the PC,
ranging from low-cost consumer to high-end workstation market segments.
The Company markets and sells its award-winning merchant 3D graphics processors to PC and graphics board OEM customers and
selectively licenses its embeddable graphics processor cores on a royalty-bearing basis to strategic technology partners. Companies using
3Dlabs' graphics processors in their systems include Acer, Compaq, Dell, Digital Equipment Corporation, Fujitsu, Gateway,
Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, IBM, Micron, NEC, and Siemens Nixdorf. Leading board vendors using 3Dlabs' graphics processors include
AccelGraphics, Appian Graphics, Creative Labs, Diamond Multimedia, ELSA, Hercules, Leadtek, Omnicomp and STB Systems.
For more information on 3Dlabs and its products, please visit our Web site at www.3dlabs.com.
Forward Looking Statements
Various matters set forth in this press release, such as statements relating to the expected price, performance, specifications, availability,
market acceptance and market position of PERMEDIA 3, are forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and
uncertainties, including without limitation, the Company's ability to engineer, debug, manufacture and produce PERMEDIA 3 in a timely
and commercially viable manner; the ability and the willingness of the Company's manufacturing partners to produce products in a timely
and cost-effective manner an in sufficient quantities; the ability of the Company to obtain and keep design wins for these products; the
ability of the Company's products to adequately meet the price/performance requirements of its customers; the success of the Company's
customers in achieving sustained demand for systems incorporating the Company's current and future products; the impact and pricing of
competitive products; the introduction of alternative technological advances and other risks detailed from time-to-time in 3Dlabs' SEC
reports.
3Dlabs, GLINT and PERMEDIA are registered trademarks of 3Dlabs Inc. Ltd. Microsoft, Windows, DirectX, and Direct3D are either
registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries. Pentium is a registered trademark of
the Intel Corporation. OpenGL is a registered trademark of Silicon Graphics, Inc. All other trademarks are acknowledged and recognized.
SOURCE: 3Dlabs, Inc.
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