3Dlabs' PERMEDIA Gains Eight New Design Wins With Taiwanese Graphics Vendors; PERMEDIA and PERMEDIA NT processors selected for mainstream graphics accelerators; Over 15 companies, including Acer and UMAX, now building PERMEDIA-based products.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 18, 1997--3Dlabs(R) Inc. (NASDAQ: TDDDF) today announced eight new PERMEDIA(TM) design-wins from leading Taiwan-based systems and graphics board companies. The new announcements bring the number of PERMEDIA design-wins world-wide to over fifteen, confirming the growing adoption of PERMEDIA for delivering integrated, high-performance 2D, 3D and multimedia acceleration for today's demanding business and consumer graphics applications.

The eight new Taiwan-based companies now offering PERMEDIA or PERMEDIA NT-based solutions include; Britek, DataExpert, Deltron, Gainward, GVC Media, Mitac, Tekram and UMAX. Most of these companies have demonstrated their PERMEDIA-based products at CeBIT'97 for the first time. Other existing PERMEDIA system and board design-wins include AccelGraphics, Acer, Creative Labs, Diamond Multimedia, ELSA, Leadtek, MaxVision, NeTpower, Omnicomp and Symmetric.

One of the new design-wins for PERMEDIA - UMAX Technologies Inc. - announced on March 10th that it will be launching its first Intel-based PC, the UmaxPC. UMAX is one of the leading Mac(R) OS clone vendors (under the SuperMac trade name) and with the UmaxPC is expected to become the first computer vendor providing both Mac and PC systems. UmaxPC is a family of high-end PCs based on the 200MHz Intel(R) MMX (TM) Pentium(R) processor, expected to ship in the second quarter of 1997. UMAX is targeting the UmaxPC at high-speed computing for business and graphics applications. The UmaxPC will ship with an optional 3Dlabs' PERMEDIA or GLINT(R) 500TX 3D graphics accelerator to deliver high-performance 3D image rendering and processing for commercial and professional graphics users.

Quotes

"The inspiration behind PERMEDIA is to deliver an integrated graphics processor with high-performing 3D and very fast 2D and multimedia capabilities," said Neil Trevett, vice president of marketing at 3Dlabs. "We believe the commercial graphics market is embracing PERMEDIA NTs robust OpenGL performance, while consumer-class board vendors have discovered they can use PERMEDIA to deliver inexpensive boards with class-leading 2D and 3D performance."

"PERMEDIA NT is the only graphics processor to provide high enough 3D performance for the demanding commercial and professional graphics users that we are targeting with the UmaxPC," said Jeffrey Tai, associate vice president at UMAX. "Not only that, but PERMEDIA also provides class-leading 2D performance, all integrated into a low-cost device that lets us set a new benchmark for price and performance in the high-performance PC market."

"We believe PERMEDIA's advanced 3D features, performance and fully-integrated multimedia capabilities have set a new standard in functionality, price and performance, compared to existing `Free-D' and game-only accelerators," said Henry Choy, marketing director at 3Dlabs. "With over 15 design wins, PERMEDIA offers end-users and OEMs a cost-effective solution for delivering superior graphics acceleration. We believe these new design-wins are representative of the strong uptake of PERMEDIA within the cost-sensitive, high-volume sectors of the highly competitive graphics processor market."

"After our extensive evaluation of 3D graphics controller solutions, 3Dlabs clearly had the most complete family of 3D graphics controllers," said K.S. Lu, president of Leadtek. "Our Winfast 2200, based on 3Dlabs' PERMEDIA NT, has excellent 2D, 3D and video performance for the pervasive 3D graphics market. Our PERMEDIA products complement our existing Winfast 2500 GLINT 500TX-based boards to deliver the performance and features that the PC workstation and semi-professional market demands."

"We found PERMEDIA delivers outstanding 2D and 3D performance that enables us to differentiate our Mars3D product in the consumer graphics market," said Samuel Lai, deputy manager of R&D at Britek Corp. "Not only is the PERMEDIA silicon in a class of its own, but 3Dlabs' range of drivers is unmatched in the industry. The combination of 3Dlabs' silicon and drivers, our design, manufacturing and desktop utilities expertise and the bundle of Superscape's Visualizer for 3D Internet browsing has created a unique card for the demanding pervasive 2D and 3D user."

PERMEDIA Information

PERMEDIA is 3Dlabs' low-cost graphics processor that combines fast 2D, video acceleration and high-performance 3D acceleration through a range of robust 3D drivers such as Direct3D, OpenGL and Heidi. PERMEDIA's 3D performance is 800K texture-mapped polygons-per-second and over 40 million bilinear-filtered texture-mapped 3D pixels-per-second. PERMEDIA is differentiated among low-cost graphics chips in that it has been designed to be OpenGL-compliant - allowing 3Dlabs' OpenGL Installable Client Driver to be fully-accelerated on low-cost hardware.

The PERMEDIA NT chipset bundles PERMEDIA with the OpenGL-compliant GLINT Delta geometry pipeline processor, to offer a cost-effective 3D solution for the semi-professional and business graphics user. PERMEDIA NT-based boards provide both PERMEDIA's excellent 2D and 3D graphics performance matched with GLINT Delta's high polygon throughput.

Company Information

Founded in 1994, 3Dlabs is a leading innovator and a fabless supplier of high-performance graphics semiconductors, software, and related technologies designed to bring cost-effective 3D graphics to the personal computer. The company has introduced five 3D graphics processors over the last two years with price, performance and functionality designed to meet the needs of different 3D market segments on the PC. The Company markets and sells its award-winning merchant 3D graphics processors to PC and graphics board OEM customers and selectively licenses its embeddable graphics processor cores on a royalty-bearing basis to strategic technology partners such as Texas Instruments. Companies using 3Dlabs' graphics processors in their computers include Compaq, Digital Equipment Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, MaxVision, NEC, NeTpower and Siemens-Nixdorf. Leading board manufacturers using 3Dlabs' graphics processors include AccelGraphics, Creative Labs, Diamond Multimedia, Elsa and Symmetric.

Except for historical information contained herein, the matters set forth in this press release, such as statements relating to the Company's receipt of design wins are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, including the ability of the Company to obtain significant purchase orders for its products; the success of the Company's customers in achieving sustained demand for systems incorporating the Company's products; the continuation of customer programs incorporating the Company's products; the introduction and impact of competitive products and pricing and of alternative technological advances; the timely and successful development and market acceptance of new products and upgrades to existing products, and other risks detailed from time-to-time in 3Dlabs' SEC reports. Moreover, customer design wins or programs may be canceled or delayed at any time.

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Note to Editors: 3Dlabs and GLINT are registered trademarks and PERMEDIA is a trademark of 3Dlabs Inc., Ltd. Microsoft, Windows, Direct3D, and DirectDraw are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries. OpenGL is a registered trademark of Silicon Graphics, Inc. All other trademarks are acknowledged and recognized.

CONTACT: 3Dlabs Inc.

Neil Trevett, 408/436-3455

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http://www.3dlabs.com

or

Horizon Communications

Jonathan Hirshon, 408/982-2555

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http://www.horizonpr.com