3Dlabs Doubles Performance of 20 GLINT-Accelerated OpenGL Drivers; New drivers available immediately to GLINT OEM Customers; Over 30 man-years invested to optimize OpenGL source code.SAN JOSE San Jose, city, United States San Jose (sănəzā`, săn hōzā`), city (1990 pop. 782,248), seat of Santa Clara co., W central Calif.; founded 1777, inc. 1850. , Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 25, 1995--3Dlabs Inc. today announced immediate availability of its second-generation GLINT(R) OpenGL(R) drivers -- boosting the already substantial performance of GLINT-based 3D accelerators by a factor or two or more when running OpenGL applications under Windows NT (Windows New Technology) A 32-bit operating system from Microsoft for Intel x86 CPUs. NT is the core technology in Windows 2000 and Windows XP (see Windows). Available in separate client and server versions, it includes built-in networking and preemptive multitasking. . The new drivers support all boards utilizing the GLINT processor and will be provided free-of-charge by 3Dlabs to its OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) The rebranding of equipment and selling it. The term initially referred to the company that made the products (the "original" manufacturer), but eventually became widely used to refer to the organization that buys the products and customers. 3Dlabs is a full OpenGL source-code licensee from Silicon Graphics, Inc. and has invested over 30 man-years to optimize the OpenGL drivers for the GLINT silicon. 3Dlabs' GLINT OpenGL drivers are based on Microsoft's "Installable Client Driver" architecture, which allows a hardware vendor to route optimized API calls directly to 3D graphics silicon. The Installable Client Driver model provides completely seamless 3D acceleration -- customers simply install the graphics board and a driver to immediately accelerate all OpenGL-based applications. 3Dlabs has over 10 years experience in developing 3D software drivers, and has used many innovative techniques in the new GLINT OpenGL drivers. These include optimizing both high-level OpenGL code and low-level software interfaces to the silicon. Quotes "Our new drivers have achieved OpenGL performance far beyond those based on intermediate porting layers such as 3D-DDI," said Osman Kent, president of 3Dlabs. "Microsoft's Installable Client Driver architecture allowed us to optimize our OpenGL drivers from the API directly to the silicon and we have leveraged our decade of 3D expertise in this effort. As the leader in PC-based 3D technology, 3Dlabs provides OEMs with both GLINT silicon devices and software that truly enables their products to redefine the state-of-the-art for PC graphics." "3Dlabs is a key industry player in providing highly accelerated OpenGL for the Windows(TM) environment," said Kate Seekings, 3D technology evangelist Not to be confused with televangelist. A technical or technology evangelist is a person whose job or role is to promote technologies, usually new technologies. for Microsoft Corporation (company) Microsoft Corporation - The biggest supplier of operating systems and other software for IBM PC compatibles. Software products include MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, Windows NT, Microsoft Access, LAN Manager, MS Client, SQL Server, Open Data Base Connectivity (ODBC), MS Mail, . "Effective hardware acceleration In computing, hardware acceleration is the use of hardware to perform some function faster than is possible in software running on the normal (general purpose) CPU. Examples of hardware acceleration include blitting acceleration functionality in graphics processing units (GPUs) and of OpenGL is a vital step in making Windows a compelling alternative to workstation platforms. The performance of GLINT-accelerated OpenGL with the new generation of drivers makes it a great option for our customers, and we will continue to work with 3Dlabs to push back the envelope of accelerated 3D graphics on the PC." "The new 3Dlabs OpenGL driver integrated seamlessly with the GLINT-based 3D accelerator on NEC's MIPS-based RISCstation(TM) 2200, designed exclusively for Windows NT," said Al Reyes Rafael Alberto Reyes (born April 10, 1970), better known as Al Reyes, is a Major League Baseball pitcher for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. In 2006 he played with the Durham Bulls in the minor leagues. , product manager of NEC's RISC RISC in full Reduced Instruction Set Computing Computer architecture that uses a limited number of instructions. RISC became popular in microprocessors in the 1980s. NT group. "The combination of our CPU CPU in full central processing unit Principal component of a digital computer, composed of a control unit, an instruction-decoding unit, and an arithmetic-logic unit. performance, 3Dlabs' GLINT silicon and their latest driver technology gives us an unbeatable 3D price/performance position in the market." "The increase in performance of our GLINT-based Sapphire 2SX board while running the new generation OpenGL drivers from 3Dlabs is remarkable," said James Evert e·vert v. To turn inside out or outward. evert to turn inside out; to turn outward. , vice president graphics, Fujitsu Microelectronics. "The GLINT was always fast, but the new drivers really unleash the power of the silicon. We are seeing OpenGL software run two, three times faster than before." "Our Open Inventor Open Inventor, originally IRIS Inventor, is a C++ object oriented retained mode 3D graphics API designed by SGI to provide a higher layer of programming for OpenGL. Its main goals are better programmer convenience and efficiency. OI for short. and WebSpace/VRML products are significantly accelerated by GLINT-based 3D boards, and that speed-up is even more dramatic with the new generation of OpenGL drivers," said Robert J. Weideman, vice president of marketing for Template Graphics Software. "Since our products are targeted at both high-end OpenGL and consumer Reality Lab markets, GLINT is a perfect platform to enable interactive, quality 3D graphics because 3Dlabs supply world-class drivers as well as great silicon." GLINT 300SX Information To support advanced CAD and visualization applications, the GLINT 300SX provides 100% of the OpenGL rendering operations in silicon -- including 32-bit color support, Gouraud shading In 3D graphics, a technique developed by Henri Gouraud in the early 1970s that computes a shaded surface based on the color and illumination at the corners of every triangle. Gouraud shading is the simplest rendering method and is computed faster than Phong shading. and depth buffering. The GLINT also implements advanced functionality such as texture-mapping, anti-aliasing and alpha blending In computer graphics, the combining of the alpha channel with other layers in an image in order to show translucency. The alpha channel is an additional eight bits used with each pixel in a 32-bit graphics system that can represent 256 levels of translucency. at rendering speeds of up to 300,000 polygons per second. The GLINT is currently the only chip shipping with an OpenGL Installable Client Driver -- providing highly- optimized OpenGL performance, integrated seamlessly into the Window NT Environment. OpenGL is fully supported and endorsed by Microsoft as the high-end 3D API for CAD, imaging and multimedia applications and the GLINT 300SX is shipping in volume to 3Dlabs customers. Company Information 3Dlabs is a worldwide OEM supplier of chips, enabling software and technology for 3D graphics. The company's products enable board and system manufacturers to integrate 3D capabilities into their products for such applications as CAD, multimedia authoring, simulation, virtual reality, interactive TV and video games. Currently, over 40 companies have incorporated GLINT into their 3D products and GLINT is recognized as the industry-standard accelerator architecture for high performance 3D graphics on the PC. 3Dlabs provides GLINT-optimized drivers for many industry leading graphics APIs, allowing a growing number of applications to achieve 3D interactivity on low cost platforms. 3Dlabs Inc., headquartered in San Jose, CA., was founded in April 1994, and is privately owned. -0- Note to Editors: 3Dlabs is a trademark, and GLINT is a registered trademark of 3Dlabs Inc. Ltd. OpenGL is a registered trademark of Silicon Graphics Inc. Microsoft and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are acknowledged. CONTACT: 3Dlabs Inc. Neil Trevett, 408/436-3456 Email: neil.trevett@3dlabs.com or Horizon Public Relations public relations, activities and policies used to create public interest in a person, idea, product, institution, or business establishment. By its nature, public relations is devoted to serving particular interests by presenting them to the public in the most Jonathan Hirshon, 408/982-2555 Email: jh@horizonpr.com |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion