3Dlabs Redefines PC Graphics with PERMEDIA Family of Graphics Processors for Pervasive 3D; High-performance 2D, 3D, video and VGA acceleration on a single chip; PERMEDIA boards will run Creative Labs 3D Blaster games.

Technologies Inc., a leading provider of client/server systems management solutions, today introduced a new version of its failover software designed to ensure constant availability of Sun systems.

OpenVHigh Availability 2.0 allows one server to become a "backup system" for other servers on the network, thus ensuring users continued access in the event of a system failure. The new release provides a many-to-one (N-1) failover environment for Sun systems ranging from the high end to the low end, including Sun SPARCstations, SPARCservers and SPARCcenters running SunOS or Solaris. The new capability reduces the number of systems required to ensure availability of business-critical data and applications and offers the most cost-effective failover for Sun users.

The N-1 failover environment supports the designation of a single secondary server as the failover target for multiple primary servers. OpenVHigh Availability 2.0 will also continue to support the asymmetric and symmetric configurations provided in previous releases. Continuing OpenVision's commitment to offer customers a wide range of configuration options, Release 2.0 now also supports the serial line Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) for private networks between failover servers. Support of this protocol allows users to utilize a serial port for network communication, reserving S-bus slots on smaller SPARCstations for other purposes. It also supports SunSoft's Solstice DiskSuite Version 4 (formerly known as Online DiskSuite or ODS4) and Veritas Volume Manager, giving users flexibility in selecting from the leading data replication services for Sun systems.

"Based on the feedback of our OpenVHigh Availability customers, we've enhanced our industry-leading failover software significantly," said Richard Barker, senior vice president of OpenVision's Technology Division. "OpenVHigh Availability 2.0 now supports multiple server failover and additional third party services, improving cost effectiveness and configurability for our customers."

OpenVision has also improved OpenVHigh Availability's installation procedure and added integration with other OpenVision applications. For example, OpenVHigh Availability has now been tightly integrated with OpenVision's enterprise-wide backup solution, OpenVNetBackup, and its Kerberos-based authentication product, OpenVSecure. This integration allows users to protect storage and security servers with failover services, ensuring continuous availability of these systems.

OpenVHigh Availability provides support for all Sun SPARCstations, SPARCservers and SPARCcenters running SunOS and Solaris as well as Oracle, Informix and Sybase databases. Pricing for OpenVHigh Availability 2.0 starts at $10,000 and will be available December 1995.

OpenVision Technologies Inc. is a leading supplier of systems management applications and services focused on automating the management of business applications within complex, distributed computing environments. It provides systems management solutions for automated operations, application availability and performance, mainframe-class storage and network and system security on leading platforms including UNIX, Digital OpenVMS, Microsoft Windows, Windows NT and DOS, and Novell NetWare. The company has over 175 employees in 12 cities worldwide and an impressive list of Fortune 500 customers and government agencies.

CONTACT: OpenVision Technologies Inc.

Kathy Salvano, 510/426-6477

or

Sterling Communications Inc.

Paul Forecki, 408/441-4100 2581794 IAC Inc. today announced its second-generation, low-cost 3D graphics accelerator family -- PERMEDIA(TM) -- that sets a new standard for integrated 2D, 3D and video acceleration.

PERMEDIA delivers 3D performance up to four times greater than any other announced graphics chip or video games system - at pricing equal to many 2D-only graphics boards. PERMEDIA will be available to selected OEMs in the first quarter of 1996, and drives the price of a complete multimedia graphics solution to below $250.

PERMEDIA generates 25 million texture-mapped pixels-per-second with high quality, true per-pixel perspective correction and full bi-linear filtering. PERMEDIA's well-balanced 3D capabilities also include Gouraud shading, optional Z-buffering, fogging, blending, translucency, overlays and stencils at a rate of up to 500,000 50 pixel triangles-per-second.

PERMEDIA contains a compact and highly optimized unified graphics engine, re-architected using technology developed for 3Dlabs' GLINT(R) workstation-class graphics processors. PERMEDIA is also protected with the same fundamental patent estate as the GLINT product line.

"I believe that 3Dlabs is positioned to be the leading provider of 3-D graphics in desktop PCs. The PERMEDIA chip strikes an impressive price/performance balance and they have the strategic partners, like Creative Labs, necessary to grow the market for entertainment-class 3-D graphics," said Geoff Ballew, semiconductor application market industry analyst at Dataquest.

Microsoft Corp. are using 3Dlabs-based hardware as a primary development platform for the Direct 3D(TM) and Reality Lab(TM) real-time 3D APIs. PERMEDIA provides 100% hardware rasterization acceleration for the Microsoft APIs under Windows(R) 95 - providing levels of 3D performance far exceeding that of any games console on the market.

"3DLabs is a long-established affiliate of Microsoft in bringing hardware acceleration to our full range of 3D APIs, from Reality Lab and Direct 3D to OpenGL(R)," said Kate Seekings, 3D technology evangelist at Microsoft. "PERMEDIA is a significant step in making 3D acceleration pervasive on the Windows-based desktop, with unprecedented levels of performance and functionality. Microsoft plans to support the PERMEDIA architecture, helping to ensure that users of Windows can take full advantage of its capabilities through Microsoft's 3D APIs."

"3Dlabs is the leading supplier of 3D silicon on the PC and we are now redefining the dynamics of that market," said Osman Kent, president and CEO of 3Dlabs. "With the introduction of PERMEDIA, 3Dlabs is providing a mainstream, pervasive 3D/multimedia chip that can replace not only today's high-end VGA products, but also any 3D game-oriented silicon. While many companies are trying to bring their first game silicon to life, we have already delivered robust silicon through GLINT and 3D Blaster in both the professional and entertainment market segments. Our vision now is to make world-class 3D available on every new PC, be it in the home, office or plane. Our licensing program and merchant chips in the PERMEDIA family are moving us aggressively toward this goal."

The first-generation, low-cost 3D chip from 3Dlabs was used exclusively by Creative Labs on their 3D Blaster(TM) board, which will be shipping in volume this Christmas. Creative plans to use custom versions of PERMEDIA for future boards in the 3D Blaster family.

Creative has been closely involved in the PERMEDIA design process and has worked with 3Dlabs to make 3D Blaster titles run on any PERMEDIA-based board without modification. This is possible due to the functional compatibility between 3D Blaster and PERMEDIA, and industry standard APIs - such as Microsoft's Reality Lab and Direct 3D. Many titles shipping today on 3D Blaster use Creative's CGL graphics library. Creative has licensed CGL to 3Dlabs - enabling CGL-based games titles to also run unmodified on PERMEDIA based cards.

"The PERMEDIA architecture is the ideal platform for our continuing relationship with 3Dlabs," said Hock Leow, vice president of the video and graphics product group at Creative. "PERMEDIA not only provides outstanding 3D performance for games and other pervasive 3D applications, but also includes the high performance 2D and video functionality we need to make our boards excel at accelerating all the graphics applications used by our customers. We are committed to working with 3Dlabs to make PERMEDIA the leading 3D architecture for pervasive 3D. Licensing our software to 3Dlabs provides a tremendous momentum to PERMEDIA by providing an immediate collection of top quality games for PERMEDIA-based boards."

"By definition, pervasive 3D includes all the entertainment applications," said Henry Choy, director of entertainment products at 3Dlabs. "We received a lot of positive feedback from the game developer community about Creative's 3D Blaster board. We listened carefully to their comments and integrated the performance and functionality into PERMEDIA to make it the leading next-generation 3D games accelerator."

While games have been the first high-volume 3D market segment, 3D graphics will become even more pervasive during 1996 with 3D capabilities being integrated into everyday applications such as 3D Web browsers, multimedia navigators, digital publishing, financial visualization, presentation packages and the graphic user interface itself. 3Dlabs is working closely with many 3D applications developers, ensuring that key vendors have access to hardware and technical support, and that software is optimally accelerated by GLINT and PERMEDIA cards.

PERMEDIA's seamlessly integrated 2D performance exceeds that of today's fastest accelerators for the Microsoft Windows 95 operating system, and its video processing capabilities include MPEG-compatible YUV color conversion and fully filtered, bi-linear scaling to provide 30fps video playback at full-screen resolution. In addition, video can be freely used as a perspective texture, enabling real-time video effects to be generated with ease - one example of how 3D-based chips are inherently more powerful than the current generation of 2D-only chips. On-chip VGA is also fully accelerated, providing unmatched performance for legacy VGA-based software and games.

PERMEDIA makes advanced 3D acceleration affordable and widespread, fueling the growth of the market for 3D software. PERMEDIA is the first pervasive 3D graphics chip that is both inexpensive enough to be used in low-cost games boards, and has the performance and functionality to be used for everyday 2D and 3D graphics tasks, including personal productivity applications.

"With GLINT's leadership position in the professional segment, 3Dlabs has been perceived as being a high-end only 3D chip company. With PERMEDIA we now have merchant chips for both the professional and pervasive 3D markets - that makes us unique in the PC industry," said Neil Trevett, vice president of marketing at 3Dlabs. "We are fully committed to extending the high-end 3D performance of the PC, and as 3D markets develop, we will continue to migrate and adapt our high-end 3D technologies into PERMEDIA-class devices."

3Dlabs is licensing the PERMEDIA technology to strategic partners developing high-volume, consumer-class devices that require integrated 3D, 2D and video acceleration. Designed completely in VHDL, PERMEDIA cores are totally portable and scaleable, allowing this ground-breaking graphics technology to be easily integrated into systems-on-silicon designs.

Silicon and Software Support for PERMEDIA

PERMEDIA can be used in conjunction with 3Dlabs' soon-to-be released floating point 3D-pipeline processor. This combination allows up to 500,000 bilinear-filtered, texture-mapped, 50 pixel triangles-per-second to be generated on desktop machines by offloading much of the geometry pipeline from the host CPU. This chip combination will provide a new level of price/performance for demanding 3D delivery systems such as arcade games, simulation and virtual reality.

IBM Microelectronics and 3Dlabs have closely cooperated during the development of PERMEDIA and the newly-announced IBM RGB526DB LUT-DAC is the result of this cooperative effort. Both IBM and 3Dlabs have integrated functionality into their silicon that takes full advantage of the product features designed into both chips. When the RGB526DB LUT-DAC is used in conjunction with PERMEDIA, a graphics board can offer high-quality double-buffering, in multiple independent windows - an essential feature for pervasive 3D - with no extra memory or supporting hardware.

3Dlabs will be supporting the widest range of 3D APIs in the industry with the PERMEDIA architecture, including Reality Lab and Direct 3D. Productivity application APIs such as Silicon Graphics' OpenGL, Autodesk's Heidi(TM), Apple's QuickDraw(TM) 3D will also be supported - allowing any 3D application to be accelerated by a PERMEDIA board.

Technical Information

The PERMEDIA uses the industry-standard, low-cost SGRAM (Synchronous Graphics RAM) memory architecture for all of its framebuffer and ancillary buffers such as Z and texture. With a fully synchronous 64-bit external data path, the combination delivers a memory bandwidth of up to 400 Mbytes/sec. Future devices in the PERMEDIA family using a higher clock frequency will raise this bandwidth to 800 Mbytes/sec - doubling graphics performance.

SGRAM is available from many DRAM vendors and is aggressively priced as synchronous memory becomes the de-facto choice for EDO DRAM replacement. PERMEDIA takes full advantage of SGRAM's advanced features such as block write and bit-masking. As all graphics buffers are kept in SGRAM, software has complete freedom over how the memory is used - for example, if the PERMEDIA board is being used for pure 2D work, then all the memory can be used to drive the highest possible screen resolution.

PERMEDIA uses the innovative BGA (Ball Grid Array) package to achieve ease-of-integration onto motherboards or graphics cards. PERMEDIA is a 3.3V, 0.35 micron device with an initial clock frequency of 50MHz.

Company Information

3Dlabs is a worldwide supplier of merchant chips, enabling software and technology for 3D graphics. The company's products and technologies enable silicon, board and system vendors to integrate 3D capabilities into their products for such applications as games, multimedia, CAD, simulation, virtual reality and interactive TV. 3Dlabs products are protected by over 20 US and international patents. The GLINT family of graphics processors is recognized as the industry-standard accelerator architecture for workstation-class high-performance 3D graphics on the PC, with over 40 companies having incorporated GLINT into their 3D products. Referred to by the "The Red Herring" investment magazine as "the first member of the next generation of chip vendors," 3Dlabs Inc. is headquartered in San Jose, CA., was founded in April 1994, and is privately owned. -0-

Note to Editors:

3Dlabs and PERMEDIA are trademarks, and GLINT is a registered trademark of 3Dlabs Inc. Ltd. 3D Blaster is a trademark of Creative Labs. Microsoft, Windows, Reality Lab and Direct 3D are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. OpenGL is a registered trademark of Silicon Graphics Inc. QuickDraw is a trademark of Apple Computer Inc. All other trademarks are acknowledged.

CONTACT: 3Dlabs Inc.

Neil Trevett

Phone: [phone]=20

Email: [e-mail]

http://www.3Dlabs.com/3Dlabs

or

Horizon Public Relations 

Jonathan Hirshon

Phone: [phone]

Email: [e-mail]