S3d Advanced Graphics Technology First to Enable 3D in Mainstream PCs; Family of Products From S3 Delivers Fully-Featured 3D Graphics for as low as $40

Business Wire, Nov 13, 1995

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 13, 1995--S3 Incorporated (NASDAQ:SIII) today will introduce the first two members of its new ViRGE (Video and Rendering Graphics Engine) family, the ViRGE and ViRGE/VX 64-bit graphics and video accelerators. Based on the company's advanced new S3d architecture, ViRGE and ViRGE/VX are the first single-chip products to integrate 3D rendering, 2D GUI and video acceleration with a RAMDAC and clock synthesizer. With a rich feature set, affordable pricing and wide industry acceptance, the ViRGE family is the first to enable 3D graphics on mainstream PCs.

Today, S3 also announced that eleven add-in-card manufacturers, in addition to leading motherboard and systems manufacturers, have publicly committed support for the ViRGE and ViRGE/VX products. Typically, new technologies for PCs are adopted first by add-in card manufacturers. As technologies mature, they are adopted by system manufacturers as well. S3 is working closely with major system companies to incorporate ViRGE accelerators in their products.

S3 expects that consumers should see affordable 3D graphics add-in-cards based on the ViRGE family in the first quarter of 1996, while system vendors are expected to follow suit starting in the second quarter of 1996 with 3D-enabled motherboards and systems.

More than ten major game developers and software publishers have already agreed to support ViRGE-based PC platforms as well, offering 1996 home PC consumers a wide variety of realistic, interactive 3D games titles. This wide base of support helps to establish S3's ViRGE family as the industry's first truly mainstream PC 3D solution.

The high level of integration, coupled with a production-proven 0.5 micron manufacturing process, allows S3 to deliver the rich ViRGE family feature set and performance at prices starting as low as $40. S3 believes this represents the lowest published price in the industry today for 3D acceleration with this list of features. Based on a bill-of-materials analysis, the ViRGE family pricing is expected to translate to the availability of full-featured 3D add-in-cards starting around $200. System costs for the end user are expected to increase by no more than a minimal $50 in the second half of 1996 for PCs incorporating ViRGE.

The PC industry has already recognized the importance of delivering realistic 3D images to the user. The missing functional element has been the rendering engine, which generates the final screen display.

"Until now, 3D graphics on the PC have been neither realistic nor affordable," said Neal Margulis, vice president, home and advanced systems, S3 Incorporated. "Currently available rendering engines are either underwhelming in their 3D rendering capabilities or have been priced out of the mainstream. S3's new ViRGE family meets and surpasses the expectations of the PC market by delivering users rich, realistic 3D rendering. Combined with our affordable price points and wide industry support, the ViRGE family will enable 3D graphics on mainstream PCs and will enable the PC to become the platform of choice for electronic game-play in the home."

S3d Technology: Rich Feature Set Delivers Clearly Visible Benefits

According to company research, the S3d engine delivers more features on a single-chip than any competitive 3D accelerator publicly announced to date. Its rich feature set allows images to approach photo-realistic quality and delivers the most compelling user experience for interactive 3D applications.

S3d is a triangle-based polygon rendering engine which provides compatibility with standard APIs for easier game development. The S3d engine provides a very complete texture mapping capability that simultaneously adds significant realism and reduces overhead complexity. The S3d engine also provides direct support for utilizing live video as a texture map. S3d supports perspective correction and sophisticated modes like bi-linear filtering, MIP-mapping and tri-linear MIP-mapping to deliver images that are free of annoying visual artifacts like "sparkle" and "jaggies." Transparency allows realistic rendering of glass, water and plastic objects. Atmospheric effects such as fog and depth cueing enable the rendering of real-world environments.

Other advanced features of the S3d engine include compressed texture formats which lower RAM requirements and increase texture and image quality. The Z-buffering feature speeds up the removal of hidden surfaces, a common 3D operation. In addition, S3's MUX buffering (patent pending) feature allows for Z-buffering support without incurring the cost of dedicated Z-buffer memory.

ViRGE: Targeted for the Mainstream Home PC Market

The ViRGE 64-bit DRAM-based accelerator features an integrated 135 MHz RAMDAC and clock synthesizer, making this the only single-chip 2D, video and 3D graphics accelerator available today. ViRGE is SVGA-compatible so as to support legacy DOS applications and games and provides high-performance 2D GUI acceleration support for resolutions up to 1280 x 1024 x 256 colors at 75Hz. High-performance memory subsystem includes single-cycle support for 1-, 2-, and 4-Mbyte of 64-bit EDO (Extended Data Out) DRAM memory. In addition to the Intel x86 family, other CPU architectures are supported. For example, the PowerPC is supported with big endian/little endian byte ordering and relocatable addressing.