Evans & Sutherland Announces Lightning Board for Low-Cost, High-Performance "REALimage" Graphics.HANNOVER, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 18, 1999-- E&S Lightning 1200 strikes at mid-range graphics applications with Pentium III-ready DYNAMICgeometry software Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp. (E&S(R)) (NASDAQ NASDAQ in full National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations U.S. market for over-the-counter securities. Established in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), NASDAQ is an automated quotation system that reports on : ESCC ESCC Eastern Shore Community College ESCC East Sussex County Council ESCC Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma ESCC Enhanced Serial Communication(s) Controller ESCC Electrically Self-Calibrating Cavity ) Thursday announced the E&S Lightning 1200(TM) graphics subsystem, the company's first low-cost fully featured REALimage(TM)-based graphics board. With an estimated street price of $699, the new board is targeted primarily at professional users of mid-level mechanical CAD and entry-level digital content creation The development of newsworthy, educational and entertainment material for distribution over the Internet or other electronic media. See DAMS. applications. The E&S Lightning 1200 with E&S DYNAMICgeometry(TM) software drivers fully exploits Intel(R) Pentium(R) III processors with Streaming SIMD Extensions (architecture) Streaming SIMD Extensions - (SSE) Intel Corporation's floating point SIMD extention of their Pentium microprocessor architecture. SSE was formerly know as KNI (Katmai New Instructions). It was introduced with the Pentium III. Intel Pentium III. ipoem. . "Until now, many graphics professionals had to make a difficult `either/or' choice," said Niraj Swarup, E&S Workstation Graphics vice president of marketing. "Either they got the performance they wanted, but at a cost of $1,500 to $2,000. Or they bought low-end 2D/3D accelerators based on consumer chipsets with poor OpenGL performance or limited OpenGL functionality. "For a large segment of the professional user community, the E&S Lighting 1200 is a no-compromise product that fills a gaping price/performance void in the marketplace." The E&S Lightning 1200 is based on the new REALimage 1200 chipset A group of chips designed to work as a unit to perform a function. For example, a modem chipset contains all the primary circuits for transmitting and receiving. A PC chipset provides the electronic interfaces between all subsystems (see PC chipset for illustration). from Evans & Sutherland. The chipset retains all key REALimage graphics features and functions, such as full-speed antialiasing See anti-aliasing. and transparency, bilinear bi·lin·e·ar adj. Linear with respect to each of two variables or positions. Used of functions or equations. Adj. 1. bilinear - linear with respect to each of two variables or positions texturing, stencils, overlays, and full-screen 1280 x1024 resolution. Unlike solutions from other graphics companies, the E&S Lighting 1200's performance does not degrade TO DEGRADE, DEGRADING. To, sink or lower a person in the estimation of the public. 2. As a man's character is of great importance to him, and it is his interest to retain the good opinion of all mankind, when he is a witness, he cannot be compelled to disclose when all graphics features are active simultaneously. It delivers up to 3.3 million triangles or antialiased vectors per second, and supports sustained textured pixel fill rates of 70 Megapixels per second. "To achieve the combination of image quality, screen resolution, and performance needed by professional users, the components required frequently pushed the price of even entry-level professional graphics cards to over $1,000," said Peter ffoulkes, Dataquest's principal analyst for advanced desktop and workstation computing. "To achieve the levels of performance required, most graphics cards vendors frequently offered dedicated processors to perform the floating-point math functions required in geometry processing Geometry processing is a fast-growing area of research that uses concepts from applied mathematics, computer science, and engineering to design efficient algorithms for the acquisition, reconstruction, analysis, manipulation, simulation and transmission of complex 3D models. ." At $699, the E&S Lightning 1200 with DYNAMICgeometry software allows geometry processing to scale automatically with future higher-performance microprocessors and with the addition of multiple processors. Intelligence built into the programmable driver architecture checks workstation resources. If a Pentium III The successor to the Pentium II from Intel. Introduced in the spring of 1999 at 500 MHz, the Pentium III architecture was similar to the Pentium II with the addition of 70 new instructions optimized for multimedia (see SSE). processor is present the driver software will use the streaming SIMD (Single Instruction stream Multiple Data stream) A computer that performs one operation on multiple sets of data. It is typically used to add or multiply eight or more sets of numbers at the same time for multimedia encoding and rendering as well as scientific instructions, and if multiple processors are present it will use the streaming SIMD instructions in all of them. In this way processing loads are dynamically allocated in order to extract maximum graphics performance from the system. -0-
Benchmark Results (Tests performed on 500MHz Pentium III system,
1280x1024, 75Hz. Higher scores are better.)
Board Est. Price ProCDRS DX-03
E&S Lightning 1200 $699 19.10 20.33
3D Labs GMX 2000 $1,699 8.34 20.34
Diamond Viper 550 $149 3.66 10.34
(E&S Lightning 1200 was tested using DYNAMICgeometry 1.1 drivers,
which will be available in April for free download. DYNAMIC geometry
1.0 drivers, which are currently shipping with AccelGALAXY graphics
boards, are available now for E&S Lightning 1200; customers may
purchase the board today and begin using it immediately.)
The Lightning 1200 graphics system provides powerful OpenGL acceleration performance to the expanding base of mid-range mechanical CAD applications as well as entry-level content creation applications such as Lightwave and 3D Studio MAX. With its support of all high-end OpenGL features, this card is also an excellent choice for price-conscious users of high-end applications such as PRO/Engineer, Unigraphics, SDRC (company) SDRC - The company behind VGX. http://sdrc.com/. , Softimage and Maya. Board comparisons using real applications illustrate pronounced performance differences, particularly between low-cost commodity boards and a true professional card. In tests against the Diamond Viper 550 based on the nVidia RIVA TNT The RIVA TNT, codenamed NV4, is a 2D, video, and 3D graphics accelerator chip for PCs that was manufactured by NVIDIA. It was released in late 1998 and cemented NVIDIA's reputation as a worthy rival within the developing consumer 3D graphics adapter industry. chip, the E&S Lightning 1200 performed 400% better on SolidWorks and PRO/Engineer tests, and 1000% better on 3D Studio MAX. Results were obtained using the latest "Detonator detonator (dĕ`tənā'tər), type of explosive that reacts with great rapidity and is used to set off other, more inert explosives. Fulminate of mercury mixed with potassium chlorate is a commonly used detonator. " driver from nVidia, which claims special Pentium III support running at 1280x1024 and 75Hz refresh. "This clearly shows that while low-end boards claim to have OpenGL support, OpenGL application performance is an entirely different story. The E&S Lightning 1200 brings the high performance of true OpenGL boards at price points that will appeal to professionals who now use inexpensive, mainstream boards due to budget constraints A Budget Constraint represents the combinations of goods and services that a consumer can purchase given current prices and his income. Consumer theory uses the concepts of a budget constraint and a preference ordering to analyze consumer choices. ," said Swarup. E&S Lightning 1200 may be ordered now. Product shipments will begin this month. In related news, Evans & Sutherland also announced that the price of its popular AccelGALAXY graphics subsystem is now reduced by 28%, to $1,099 for the 36MB version and $1,199 for the 52MB version. Evans & Sutherland Evans & Sutherland develops and manufactures hardware and software to produce highly realistic 3D images. E&S business units deliver high-quality visual systems for simulation and training in defense and commercial applications; graphics systems for high-performance workstations; and related applications throughout the world. Visit the E&S web page at http://www.es.com. Note to Editors: E&S, E&S Lightning 1200, REALimage, DYNAMICgeometry, and AccelGALAXY are trademarks or registered trademarks of Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp., Salt Lake City. All other trade names or marks are the properties of their respective owners. |
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