{"id":1815,"date":"2013-04-19T13:12:32","date_gmt":"2013-04-19T17:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.nccomputertech.com\/?p=1815"},"modified":"2013-04-19T13:12:32","modified_gmt":"2013-04-19T17:12:32","slug":"history-of-the-modern-graphics-processor-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/2013\/04\/19\/history-of-the-modern-graphics-processor-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"History of the Modern Graphics Processor, Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Fall of 3Dfx and The Rise of Two Giants<br \/>\nWith the turn of the century the graphics industry bore witness to further consolidation.<br \/>\nThe pro market saw iXMICRO leave graphics entirely, while NEC and Hewlett-Packard both produced their last products, the TE5 and VISUALIZE FX10 series respectively. Evans &amp; Sutherland also parted ways with the sale of its RealVision line to focus on the planetaria and fulldome projection systems.<br \/>\nIn the consumer graphics market, ATI announced the acquisition of ArtX Inc. in February 2000, for around $400 million in stock. ArtX was developing the GPU codenamed Project Dolphin (eventually named \u201cFlipper\u201d) for the Nintendo GameCube, which added significantly to ATI\u2019s bottom line.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.techspot.com\/article\/657-history-of-the-gpu-part-3\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/nccomputertech.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/04\/ati-flipper.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>ATI GameCube GPU<br \/>\nAlso in February, 3dfx announced a 20% workforce cut, then promptly moved to acquire Gigapixel for $186 million and gained the company\u2019s tile-based rendering IP.<br \/>\nMeanwhile, S3 and Nvidia settled their outstanding patent suits and signed a seven-year cross-license agreement.<br \/>\nVIA assumed control of S3 around April-May which itself was just finishing a restructuring process from the acquisition of Number Nine. As part of S3\u2019s restructuring, the company merged with Diamond Multimedia in a stock swap valued at $165 million. Diamond\u2019s high-end professional graphics division, FireGL, was spun off as SONICblue and later sold to ATI in March 2001 for $10 million.<br \/>\n3DLabs acquired Intergraph\u2019s Intense3D in April, while the final acts of 3dfx played out towards the end of the year, despite 2000 kicking off with the promise of a better future as the long-awaited Voodoo 5 5500 neared its debut in July. The latter ended up trading blows with the GeForce 256 DDR and won the high-resolution battle.<br \/>\nWhere 3dfx was once a byword for raw performance, its strengths around this time laid in its full screen antialiasing image quality.<br \/>\nBut where 3dfx was once a byword for raw performance, its strengths around this time laid in its full screen antialiasing image quality. The Voodoo 5 introduced T-buffer technology as an alternative to transformation and lighting, by basically taking a few rendered frames and aggregating them into one image. This produced a slightly blurred picture that, when run in frame sequence, smoothed out the motion of the animation.<br \/>\n3dfx\u2019s technology became the forerunner of many image quality enhancements seen today, like soft shadows and reflections, motion blur, as well as depth of field blurring.<br \/>\n3dfx\u2019s swan song, the Voodoo 4 4500, arrived October 19 after several delays \u2013 unlike the 4200 and 4800 that were never released. The card was originally scheduled for spring as a competitor to Nvidia\u2019s TNT2, but ended up going against the company\u2019s iconic GeForce 256 DDR instead, as well as the much better performing GeForce 2 GTS and ATI Radeon DDR.<br \/>\nOn November 14, 3dfx announced they were belatedly ceasing production and sale of their own-branded graphics cards, something that had been rumoured for some time but largely discounted. Adding fuel to the fire, news got out that upcoming Pentium 4 motherboards would not support the 3.3V AGP signalling required Voodoo 5 series.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.techspot.com\/article\/657-history-of-the-gpu-part-3\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/nccomputertech.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/04\/voodoo-5-5500agp.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Voodoo5 5500 AGP box art<br \/>\nThe death knell sounded a month later for 3dfx when Nvidia purchased its IP portfolio for $70 million plus one million shares of common stock. A few internet wits later noted that the 3dfx design team which had moved to Nvidia eventually got both their revenge and lived up to their potential, by delivering the underperforming NV30 graphics chip powering the FX 5700 and FX 5800 cards behind schedule.<br \/>\nFull Story: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techspot.com\/article\/657-history-of-the-gpu-part-3\/\" target=\"_blank\">History of the Modern Graphics Processor, Part 3 &#8211; TechSpot<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Fall of 3Dfx and The Rise of Two Giants With the turn of the century the graphics industry bore [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[105,437,440,529,760,854,1155],"class_list":["post-1815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hardware","category-technology","tag-ati","tag-gpu","tag-graphics-card","tag-intel","tag-nvidia","tag-processor","tag-video-card"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/papNkV-th","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8649,"url":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/2015\/10\/05\/nvidias-upcoming-pascal-gpu-pictured-with-hbm-2-0-techspot\/","url_meta":{"origin":1815,"position":0},"title":"Nvidia&#8217;s upcoming Pascal GPU pictured with HBM 2.0 &#8211; TechSpot","author":"NCCT","date":"October 5, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Nvidia's next-generation graphics core, codenamed 'Pascal', is expected to launch in the first half of 2016, bringing a large jump in performance that should impress the PC gaming enthusiasts out there. But before the GPU could be publicly detailed by Nvidia, a slide from the company's GTC Taiwan 2015 presentation\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Hardware&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Hardware","link":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/category\/hardware\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6967,"url":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/2014\/11\/25\/samsung-wants-the-itc-to-block-nvidia-chips-in-the-us\/","url_meta":{"origin":1815,"position":1},"title":"Samsung wants the ITC to block Nvidia chips in the US","author":"NCCT","date":"November 25, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"In the latest round of a patent battle between Nvidia and Samsung, Samsung petitioned the US International Trade Commission to block the sale of Nvidia\u2019s graphics processors in the US, Bloomberg reported on Friday. The request, according to the ITC, would extend to both Nvidia\u2019s graphics cards and systems on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8824,"url":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/2016\/02\/04\/this-week-in-computer-hardware-349-gpu-stress-raid-0-madness\/","url_meta":{"origin":1815,"position":2},"title":"This Week in Computer Hardware 349: GPU Stress &#038; RAID 0 Madness","author":"NCCT","date":"February 4, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/80VuAGWRAIo Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Patrick Norton Rise of the Tomb Raider graphics push GPUs, Android Wear adds new gestures, Tesla gets a new CPU designer, Logitech G810 Orion Spectrum RGB Mechanical Keyboard Review, and more!","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Hardware&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Hardware","link":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/category\/hardware\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/80VuAGWRAIo\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7564,"url":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/2015\/02\/06\/arm-unveils-new-chip-design-promises-console-level-graphics\/","url_meta":{"origin":1815,"position":3},"title":"ARM unveils new chip design; promises console-level graphics","author":"NCCT","date":"February 6, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday ARM unveiled their upcoming reference chips and based on their comments future gadgets will be insanely powerful. In case you\u2019re not familiar ARM is the company that designs the chips that power most of our gadgets so when they put out a new reference chip it\u2019s a pretty big\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Hardware&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Hardware","link":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/category\/hardware\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5878,"url":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/2014\/06\/30\/like-the-old-days-why-amd-and-nvidia-are-fighting-techspot\/","url_meta":{"origin":1815,"position":4},"title":"Like the old days: Why AMD and Nvidia are fighting?","author":"NCCT","date":"June 30, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"AMD and Nvidia are at it again. The two reigning champs in the market for video game graphics have been fighting since late last month when some performance issues on the PC version of Watch Dogs kicked up a fresh controversy. And given that AMD is still talking about the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Hardware&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Hardware","link":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/category\/hardware\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3134,"url":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/2013\/08\/08\/pc-gamers-fuel-hardware-sales-in-otherwise-stagnant-market\/","url_meta":{"origin":1815,"position":5},"title":"PC gamers fuel hardware sales in otherwise stagnant market","author":"NCCT","date":"August 8, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"There\u2019s no denying the market is increasingly moving away from desktop computers and towards mobile devices. We see reports highlighting this quarter after quarter along with several explanations for the trend; from price sensitivity to maturing markets and longer PC hardware upgrade cycles. But despite the gloomy headlines forecasting the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Hardware&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Hardware","link":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/category\/hardware\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}