Evans & Sutherland Boosts Pro/ENGINEER Performance With New DYNAMICgeometry Driver; Upgrade Improves E&S Graphics Accelerator Performance Up to 60%
11/9/99 8:07:55 AM
SALT LAKE CITY, Nov 9, 1999 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation (E&S(R)) (NASDAQ: ESCC) today announced that it has upgraded its E&S Lightning 1200(TM) and E&S Tornado 3000(TM) graphics accelerators with a new optimized driver.
Now E&S Lightning 1200, the company's first low-cost, fully featured REALimage(R)-based board, and E&S Tornado 3000, the company's most powerful board, will give users of Parametric Technology Corporation's (PTC) Pro/ENGINEER(R) a notable increase in performance.
"Lightning and Tornado customers will now see greatly improved product performance in areas such as wireframe and 3D shaded graphics," said Pratish Shah, E&S Workstation Graphics director of marketing. "Upgrading our accelerators with this new driver is just another example of E&S consistently looking for new ways to enhance its products to meet our customers' needs."
The E&S Lightning 1200 and the E&S Tornado 3000 are both certified with Pro/ENGINEER, one of the most widely used mechanical design software programs in the world. With the optimized versions of E&S Lightning and E&S Tornado, Pro/ENGINEER users will experience significantly better performance on projects such as solid modeling design, prototyping, and product testing.
"This performance increase is the direct result of close collaboration between the development teams at PTC and E&S," said Glenn Sinclair, hardware partner manager for Parametric Technology Corporation. "E&S is clearly committed to maximizing value for Pro/ENGINEER customers."
The effects of the new driver on E&S's accelerators can be seen in benchmark tests done by Pro/E The Magazine's Bench98, Gbench98, APC, and the NTSIPM test. According to New Technology Solutions' NTSIPM Benchmark Test, the new driver gives both E&S Lightning 1200 and E&S Tornado 3000 an overall increase of performance up to 60%.
Compared to the competition, E&S' accelerators now run up to 15% faster than the leaders in the industry - making it the fastest high-quality card at the lowest price point on the market.
The new driver supports E&S's DYNAMICgeometry(TM) architecture and is optimized to take advantage of Streaming SIMD Extensions from Intel. It is also fully OpenGL and certified with applications such as: 3D Studio MAX, 3D Studio VIZ, Houdini, Lightscape, LightWave 3D, Maya NT, Mirai, Softimage3D, AutoCAD, Mechanical Desktop, I-DEAS, MicroStation, Pro/ENGINEER, Solid Edge, SolidDesigner, SolidWorks, and Unigraphics.
Current E&S Lightning 1200 and Tornado board owners can simply download the new driver at no charge from E&S's website at es.com. New customers will receive the new driver with any E&S Lightning 1200 or E&S Tornado 3000. The retail price for E&S Lightning 1200 is $399, and the price for E&S Tornado 3000 is $1,299.
About New Technology Solutions' Benchmark Test New Technology Solutions Inc. (NTSI), a leading systems integrator of Pro/ENGINEER(R), Pro/INTRALINK(R) and Windows NT(R) solutions, designed its Benchmark Test to become an industry standard. NTSI's Benchmark Test is comprised of two utilities, NTSI-FPM-99(R) (Features Per Minute) and NTSI-SPM-99(R) (Spins Per Minute).
NTSI-FPM-99 targets CPU intensive operations and calculates the number of features that a Pro/ENGINEER workstation can "Regenerate" in 60 seconds. NTSI-SPM-99 measures the graphics capabilities of Pro/ENGINEER workstations by calculating the rotation speed of shaded and contoured models. NTSI has proven these test results to be consistent with the lengthier and more complicated programs used in the past.
About E&S Lightning 1200 E&S Lightning 1200 is the entry-level product in Evans & Sutherland's lineup of 3D graphics accelerators. Based on the REALimage(R) 1200 chipset, E&S Lightning 1200 is designed for professional users of CAD, modeling, DCC, and visualization/simulation applications.
As with all REALimage-based products, texturing performance is excellent, and antialiasing quality is the best in the industry. E&S Lightning 1200 is Pentium III-ready and incorporates E&S's newest software architecture, DYNAMICgeometry.
About E&S Tornado 3000 E&S Tornado 3000 is designed for the demanding user who needs top performance, especially for texturing in visualization/simulation, digital content creation, and CAD applications. E&S Tornado 3000 features Evans & Sutherland's REALimage 3000 technology, which provides texture fill rates of 100M pixels per second.
Each E&S Tornado 3000 board comes with a high-performance 30MB 3DRAM frame buffer, enabling true color, high-resolution with dual screens. Tornado also includes 32MB of dedicated CDRAM texture memory.
Leading-edge functionality includes support for dual monitors with one card (1280x1024 at true color each monitor), ability to view 3D objects in stereo using stereo glasses, and resolution support of up to 1920x1200 for 16:9 aspect ratio monitors. E&S Tornado 3000 is Pentium III-ready and incorporates E&S's newest software architecture, DYNAMICgeometry.
Evans & Sutherland Evans & Sutherland develops and manufactures hardware and software to produce highly realistic 3D images. E&S business units deliver high-quality visual systems for simulation and training in defense and commercial applications; graphics systems for high-performance workstations; and related applications throughout the world.
Through its acquisition of San Jose-based AccelGraphics in June 1998, E&S expanded its workstation graphics offerings to include board level products. Visit the E&S web page at es.com.
E&S and REALimage are registered trademarks, and E&S Lightning 1200, E&S Tornado 3000, and DYNAMICgeometry are trademarks of Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation. All other trade names or marks are the properties of their respective owners.
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