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Technology Stocks : S3 (A LONGER TERM PERSPECTIVE) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mark doubiago who wrote (11854)	8/28/1998 9:37:00 AM
From: Michael	Respond to of 14577

The scheme is built into Windows and won't cost ATI anything. It is part of DirectX 6.0.

To: mark doubiago who wrote (11854)	8/28/1998 10:00:00 AM
From: Ski	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14577

Hi Marc, This my understanding of the way that compression deal works. Microsoft takes pieces of technology from the graphics vendors and incorporates these clever tricks into the standard API, Direct3D. The various graphics vendors make submissions to Microsoft, the ideas are bandied about, and then MS makes the final call as to what gets added to the API (Application Programming Interface), and therefore all future graphics chips. For 3D graphics, Microsoft's API is Direct3D. In this case, S3's texture compression was added to the Direct 3D API in the past year. Then all the graphics vendors get to use the technology for free as it's covered under a general licensing agreement between the graphics vendors and Microsoft. It is by the use of standards like Direct3D, that all the graphics vendors get the same feature set, the ability to differentiate products profitably drops, prices come down, more PCs are sold, and Microsoft maintains its monopoly. Microsoft has been using this API strategy forever to control where the PC platform is going. Clever, huh? Ever wonder why the graphics vendors as a group only make a few nickels while Microsoft wallows in dollars? So, my understanding is that S3 doesn't get beans out of their texture compression idea, other than having roughly half a product generation to trumpet their cool technology, which goes some way with the OEMs in demonstrating S3 has a clue. To be clear though, ATI, nVidia, 3Dfx and probably 3Dlabs also all have ideas on the table at Microsoft to push the graphics envelope. But, for a cool idea like texture compression to be used by all the game and application developers, there has to be a standard API (Application Programming Interface) for the developers to write to. Most developers have no interest in developing custom versions of applications to match a particular graphics chip, though they'll do it if you put a few hundreds of thousands of dollars in their pocket. The only exception to that is 3Dfx, who has had the fastest gamer graphics chips for several years, so it was worth developers writing to 3Dfx's custom API (Glide), so as to get the incremental performance advantages for the hardcore, big game buying, gamer customer base. But, increasingly, Direct3D doesn't suck, so the incremental advantages of writing to Glide are diminishing and most developers now choose to write to Direct3D, as it is the standard that all graphics chips adhere to, not just 3Dfx. In the case of S3 and Unreal, it was just good business for the developer to do Unreal using the S3 texture compression, as the Unreal game will work on ALL future graphics chips supporting this, now Microsoft standard texture compression scheme. I hope that helps. Ski