ADVANCE NEC VideoLogic to support Intel's Accelerated Graphics Port.(ADVANCE) MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 12, 1996-- Friday NEC (NEC Corporation, Tokyo, www.nec.com, www.necus.com) An electronics conglomerate known in the U.S. for its monitors. In Japan, it had the lion's share of the PC market until the late 1990s (see PC 98). NEC was founded in Tokyo in 1899 as Nippon Electric Company, Ltd. Electronics Inc. and VideoLogic Ltd. announced that the future family of their integrated videographics accelerators, incorporating the PowerVR 3D technology, will support Intel's new Accelerated Graphics Port See AGP. (hardware, graphics) Accelerated Graphics Port - (AGP) A bus specification by Intel which gives low-cost 3D graphics cards faster access to main memory on personal computers than the usual PCI bus. (AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) A high-speed 32-bit port from Intel for attaching a display adapter to a PC. It provides a direct connection between the card and memory, and only one AGP slot is on the motherboard. ). The AGP will provide future PCs with a high-bandwidth, low-latency, direct connection to the PC's main memory. This will allow AGP systems using the PowerVR 3D technology to eliminate local texture memory Memory on the display adapter used to hold the texture maps. See texture mapping. , sharing system memory with no loss of 3D performance. NEC and VideoLogic expect to sample AGP compatible graphics accelerators to OEMs during the first half of 1997, with volume shipments concurrent with Intel's AGP Pentium Pro The sixth generation of the Intel x86 family of CPU chips. The term may refer to the chip or to a PC that uses it. Introduced in 1995 as the successor to the Pentium, models from 150 MHz to 200 MHz were released. chipset in the second half of 1997. "We are please to see NEC joining with other graphics industry leaders to support the implementation of the Accelerated Graphics Port interface," said Mike Aymar, vice president, Intel Corp. "This support will help drive compelling high performance 3D graphics into the mainstream PC platform." AGP further extends PowerVR's price/performance leadership for arcade-level 3D The revolutionary PowerVR architecture delivers the highest possible 3D performance at the lowest possible cost by eliminating the local z-buffer memory found on conventional 3D systems and minimizing frame buffer An area of memory used to hold a frame of data. Typically used for screen output, the buffer is the size of the maximum image that can be displayed on the screen. The memory, which is either a separate memory bank on the display adapter or a reserved part of regular memory, holds a and texture memory accesses. The key to this cost reduction and effective AGP use is the PowerVR's on-chip hidden surface removal See z buffer. and deferred texturing, which require a fraction of the memory bandwidth Memory bandwidth is the rate at which data can be read from or stored into a semiconductor memory by a processor. Memory bandwidth is usually expressed in units of bytes/second, though this can vary for systems with natural data sizes that are not a multiple of the commonly used needed by conventional 3D systems. Because AGP shares main system memory bandwidth with 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. and PCI (1) (Payment Card Industry) See PCI DSS. (2) (Peripheral Component Interconnect) The most widely used I/O bus (peripheral bus). accesses PowerVR's low memory access requirement ensures the majority of main memory bandwidth is available to the CPU -- often the bottleneck in high-performance 3D systems. This enables the PowerVR architecture to break the performance barrier hit by other AGP 3D systems. Requiring no local z-buffer or AGP-based z-buffering, and with at least one-third of the texture memory bandwidth requirements Bandwidth requirements (communications) The channel bandwidths needed to transmit various types of signals, using various processing schemes. Every signal observed in practice can be expressed as a sum (discrete or over a frequency continuum) of sinusoidal of other 3D solutions, this innovative architecture enables integrated videographics accelerators using the PowerVR 3D technology to take full advantage of the AGP. With today's games "depth complexities" are averaging around 3-5, polygons on the screen are textured and overwritten roughly 3-5 times. Each overwrite (1) A data entry mode that writes over existing characters on screen when new characters are typed in. Contrast with insert mode. (2) To record new data on top of existing data such as when a disk record or file is updated. is actually a read-modify-write, and thus require massive fill rates and texture memory bandwidth for even standard resolution display output. These architectures do not readily adapt to AGP implementations. The PowerVR architecture's deferred texturing means that only visible polygons are textured and written into the frame buffer (as a write-only operation and not read-modify-write) regardless of the games depth complexity ensuring the absolute minimum AGP bandwidth is used. This ensures the highest overall 3D system performance is achieved. The PowerVR Technology provides a truly scalable AGP 3D solution The PowerVR-based AGP accelerators require minimal external local memory and use the AGP's bandwidth very efficiently indeed. This means 3D performance is determined by the Pentium CPU's ability to perform geometry calculations In 3D graphics rendering, the computation of the base properties for each point (vertex) of the triangles forming the objects in the 3D world. See graphics pipeline. , not PowerVR's rendering speed. The faster the CPU, the better the PowerVR's 3D performance. Dr. Hossein Yassaie, vice president engineering at VideoLogic said: "The AGP approach has major similarities to the PowerVR arcade systems architecture. The direct access to system memory offered by AGP, combined with the PowerVR's inherently conservative use of bandwidth will absolutely make the AGP-based PowerVR videographics accelerators the best price/performance offering available." PowerVR 3D technology is fully compatible with industry 3D standard software interfaces The PowerVR-based solutions from NEC and its partners support both polygon and surface constructed 3D models and are fully compatible with Microsoft's new Direct X and Apple's RAVE software interfaces. In addition the PowerVR technology has its own 3D graphics library called PowerVR SGL SGL See Speculative Grade Liquidity Rating (SGL). . This means a wide range of 3D games and applications will be readily available when AGP-based Pentium Pro systems start shipping. Single chip motherboard and add-in cards AGP-enabled integrated videographics accelerators-based on the PowerVR 3D, including single chip packages, add-in cards and chip down solutions, will hit previously unachievably low system price points while retaining no-compromise 3D performance. For system designers, adding a single chip AGP accelerator using the PowerVR technology will be an even lower-cost path to delivering systems with arcade-level 3D graphics. This new combination of architectures places the PowerVR technology squarely as the de-facto standard 3D PC game platform for 1997. About NEC Electronics NEC Electronics, with headquarters in Mountain View, manufactures and markets an extensive line of electronic products including ASICs, microprocessors and microcontrollers, digital signal processors (DSPs), memories and components, including flat panel displays. In 1995, the company ranked fourth in semiconductor sales in the United States. /A The company operates a 676,000-square foot manufacturing facility in Roseville, Calif. NEC Electronics is an affiliate of NEC Corp. (NIPNY), a $43 billion international manufacturer of computer, communications and semiconductor products. About VideoLogic VideoLogic was founded in 1985 and has headquarters in the United Kingdom. The company is a prominent international supplier of PC multimedia products with distribution in more that 50 countries through computer retail and mass merchandising channels, value-added resellers, OEMs and directly by calling VideoLogic at 800/578-5644. The company maintains 24-hour customer support and can be reached through the Internet (http://www.videologic.com), CompuServe (GO VIDEOLOGIC) and the Microsoft Network (Go To VideoLogic). VideoLogic, which is publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange London Stock Exchange London marketplace for securities. It was formed in 1773 by a group of stockbrokers who had been doing business informally in local coffeehouses. (VDL VDL - Vienna Definition Language :FOOTSY foot·sy n. Informal Variant of footsie. ), develops highly integrated, advanced multimedia semiconductors and software and has development agreements with Compaq, IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) and NEC. It operates a European office in Frankfurt, Germany and has its U.S. corporate headquarters in San Bruno, Calif. -0- Editors Note: For executive interviews in the United States, please contact Lisa Stein, Cohn & Wolfe, 310/226-3021, lisa_stein@yr.com. For executive interviews in Europe, please contact Patrick Jubb, VideoLogic, Ltd., (44) 1923 260511, patrick@videologic.com. Note: NEC is a registered trademark of NEC Corp. PowerVR is a trademark of VideoLogic. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders. Note A: According to Dataquest. (End of advance for release July 12) CONTACT: NEC Electronics Inc., Mountain View Literature Hotline, 800/366-9782 800/729-9288 (fax) or Cohn & Wolfe/LA (For NEC Electronics Inc.) Lisa Stein, 310/226-3021 310/226-3041 (fax) lisa_stein@yr.com or VideoLogic Inc., San Bruno (USA, Canada & Latin America) Charles Bellfield, 415/875-0606 415/875-4167 (fax) charles@videologic.com or VideoLogic Ltd., Frankfurt (Europe & Pacific) Patrick Jubb, (44) 1923 260511 (44) 1923 268969 (fax) patrick@videologic.com |
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