TI, 3Dlabs drive deeper into single-chip 3-Ds

Electronic News,  May 26, 1997  by Peter Brown

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TI and 3Dlabs are targeting the Permedia 2 at multimedia segments including the commercial high-end, mainstream commercial and mainstream consumer markets. Last year, TI and 3Dlabs signed a cross-licensing agreement allowing 3Dlabs access to TI's RAMDAC technology and fabrication capacity. The agreement also gave TI access to 3Dlabs' Permedia graphics processing cores (May 13, 1996). Both TI and 3Dlabs will market the Permedia 2 chip, with TI's version dubbed the TVP4020.

"We have worked with 3Dlabs for some time but this is the first joint development where each company has contributed significant portions," said Steven P. Nelson, marketing program manager for mixed signal products for TI's Semiconductor Group, in an interview.

"To create this type of processor it takes a lot of intellectual property and enormous time and effort. You can either do all the engineering and investment yourself taking however many years, or you can team-up and create a product in a short time span like Permedia 2."

TI plans to use its digital signal processing (DSP) and mixed-signal processing capabilities in the development of future graphics processors with 3Dlabs, Mr. Nelson said.

Manufactured on a 0.35-micron CMOS process in TI's Dallas, Texas facility, the Permedia 2 features an integrated 230MHz RAMDAC, on-chip AGP/PCI interface, two DMA converters, a video streams interface and an integrated Delta floating point setup from 3Dlabs.

The graphics processor has a performance level of 100 million WinMarks for 2-D graphics, 1 million polygons per second and 80 million pixels per second for 3-D performance and features XY scaling and video-in-a-window for advanced video processing. The device also supports up to 8MB of SDRAM or SGRAM off chip and is also 3.3 and 5-volt tolerant.

The graphics processor also contains drivers for OpenGL, Microsoft's Direct3D and Heidi application programming interface (API). "You have to have both API drivers on your graphics engines these days not to get involved in some religious conflict in the API wars," said Neil Trevett, VP of marketing at 3Dlabs. "You really need both anyway because OpenGL is good in some aspects of the industry while Direct3D is good in other aspects. Both serves a purpose and you need both to be competitive in multiple segments of the graphics arena."

The Permedia 2 will be utilized across the graphics spectrum, from high-end workstations to consumer applications such as PC gaming, virtual reality and World Wide Web browsing. TI/3Dlabs plan for the Permedia 2 to sample in 2Q97 and be in volume production in 3Q97 priced at $35 in 50,000-unit quantities.

"Certain devices are inexpensive but are low in performance while a lot of devices are high in price and high in performance," said Mr. Nelson. "The challenge then is for us to meet the high performance with the right price and I think with the Permedia 2 we are on our way to doing this."

Meanwhile, 3Dlabs has already scored 14 design wins for the Permedia chip from add-in board and system vendors who will ship products based on the graphics processor.

These companies include "9", AccelGraphics, Canopus, Diamond Multimedia, Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), ELSA, Hercules Computer Technology, I-O Data, Melco, Netpower, Newer Technologies, Radius, STB and Symmetric.

"Digital has selected Permedia 2-based graphics systems for our personal workstation graphics reference selling program. The Permedia 2 graphics processor provides better visuals and faster graphics than the current generation of low-cost 3-D graphics accelerators," said Lynn Thorsen-Jensen, director of graphics and multimedia product lines at DEC.

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