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3Dfx Interactive debuts fast Banshee 2D/3D chip
By Mark Hachman
Silicon Valley- With the release of the Voodoo Banshee, 3Dfx Interactive
Inc.'s new integrated 2D/3D chip, the company has revamped its approach to
the OEM graphics market.
But while buyers may be screaming for supplies of 3Dfx's existing 3D-only,
PCI-based Voodoo 2 chipsets, the Voodoo Banshee has prompted some
observers to wail in protest.
They argue that in producing a single-chip part, 3Dfx removed one of its
vaunted texturing units and limited the chip's performance compared with the
company's older Voodoo 2. More important, the new chip includes only a 1x
AGP interface. Instead of using the PC's main memory to store textures,
OEMs will need to purchase additional DRAM to cache this information.
On the other hand, analysts and 3Dfx executives point out that the Voodoo
Banshee was produced out of financial necessity. Furthermore, they argue that
any technical limitations the chip might have will be overcome with a process
shrink and a minor redesign later this year.
From a strategic standpoint, 3Dfx has to date carved out its own 3D-only
niche, competing directly against only NEC Electronics Inc.'s PowerVR
architecture. Now, the Banshee will be thrust into a price war against
generations of chips from the likes of Intel Corp., 3Dlabs Inc., NVidia Corp.,
and others.
"In this market, there are a lot of good chips being sold at bad prices," said
Andy Fischer, an analyst at Jon Peddie Associates, Tiburon, Calif.
The Banshee marks the second time 3Dfx has entered the OEM market. But
its Voodoo Rush chipset, which the Banshee replaced, used a third-party 2D
chip. In the coming year, virtually all Banshee design wins should be limited to
add-on cards, not motherboards, executives said.
With the Banshee, 3Dfx claims that it has custom-designed a true 128-bit 2D
engine, outperforming even traditional 2D leader Matrox Graphics Inc.
The chip features a 16-bit floating-point Z-buffer, as well as interfaces to
SGRAM and SDRAM. Full scene-edge anti-aliasing, environmental fog,
bump mapping, and environment mapping are included.
Although 3Dfx has enjoyed con-siderable success in the 3D-only market,
Fischer contended that 3Dfx's investors virtually required the company to
grow by expanding into new segments.
Company executives agreed, but noted that the added revenue will fund
research as well as stock prices. "To develop this technology requires a lot of
cost," said Saul Altabet, director of product marketing at San Jose-based
3Dfx. "We need to amortize the R&D cost as widely as possible."
In its IPO filing, 3Dfx originally expected the Banshee to ship in the first
quarter of this year. The chip will now ship in the third quarter, although
samples are available.
The Banshee's peak fill rate is 100 megapixels per second-identical to that of
the Voodoo 2 chipset. But by sacrificing one of its texturing blocks in creating
a single-chip design, the Banshee's fill rate for bilinear filtered texels has
dropped from 180 to 100 megapixels per second.
In addition, the Banshee requires two cycles to perform operations such as
multitexturing and level-of-detail MIP mapping, while the Voodoo 2 requires
just one. Like the Voodoo 2, the Banshee is designed specifically for the
out-of-order instructions used by Intel's Pentium II microprocessor.
Analysts differ over the significance of not moving directly to a 2x AGP
interface, a common feature in competing parts. "OEMs have certain
check-off items, and if they don't see one, they'll just jump to the next part,"
Fischer said.
On the other hand, "AGP was designed when frame buffers were 1 to 2
megabytes," said Dean McCarron, principal at Mercury Research, Scottsdale,
Ariz.
Because 3Dfx and its competitors are designing products for add-on cards
containing 8 to 16 Mbytes of DRAM, the choice to use 1x AGP "is a moot
point," according to McCarron.
Altabet and a 3Dfx spokesman hastened to add that a 2x AGP part will be on
the market shortly, possibly in the shrink from 0.35 to 0.25 micron, which is
planned for later this year.
The Voodoo Banshee ships with the option of a 230- or 250-MHz
RAMDAC, as well as a video management interface connector to add a
third-party MPEG decoder. The chip's clock speed is 100 MHz, with an
increase to 125 MHz planned for the 0.25-micron version.
The company is quoting a price of $38 "in large volumes" for the 3.3-V
Voodoo Banshee,which ships in a 352-pin PBGA.
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