REPEAT/Mitsubishi Announces IMPAC-GE, The Industry's First Microcode-Programmable Geometry Engine.

ORLANDO, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 21, 1998--

Single-chip geometry engine eliminates bottlenecks at the front end of the 3D graphics pipeline

The Electronic Device Group of Mitsubishi Electronics America, Inc., today introduced IMPAC-GE(TM), the industry's first microcode-programmable, single-chip geometry engine for high-end 3D graphics accelerators. The programmability of the IMPAC-GE allows for load balancing between the geometry engine and progressively faster future-generation host CPUs. The result is a more balanced 3D graphics pipeline that eliminates performance bottlenecks and accelerates the operation of OpenGL(R) and DirectX(R) application programming interfaces (APIs) for demanding 3D graphics applications, including animation, simulation, visualization, virtual reality, and CAD applications.

"Mitsubishi is pleased to introduce the first in a family of microcode-programmable geometry engines to provide customers considerable design longevity that can span generations of increasingly higher-performance host CPUs," said Dr. Alan Wessel, 3D graphics program manager for Mitsubishi Electronics America. "Competing 'hardwired' geometry engines provide acceptable acceleration only until the host CPU's performance catches up. Because Mitsubishi's IMPAC-GE chips will continue to scale with the host CPU, they will always provide additional performance on top of what the host CPU can provide."

Like competing geometry engine solutions, Mitsubishi's IMPAC-GE chip is designed to offload transformation, clipping and lighting 3D tasks from the host CPU. However, because it employs programmable microcode, developers can change the partitioning of the geometry engine and a faster, next-generation host CPU to increase geometry and therefore the overall graphics performance.

The IMPAC-GE chip was developed with inputs from Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation to work with their REALimage(TM) family of graphics accelerators. The Fire GL 5000 graphics accelerator from Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc., based on the REALimage 2100 accelerator chipset, is the first design win for the IMPAC-GE chip. The Fire GL 5000 delivers a Viewperf CDRS-03 score of over 110 on a 400-MHz Intel Pentium(R) II Xeon processor-based system, significantly exceeding the score of 87 which was achieved without the IMPAC-GE chip.

IMPAC-GE features a flexible "PCI/AGP to PCI" bridge that configures two asynchronous PCI and AGP busses and employs a direct memory access (DMA) control function. This allows IMPAC-GE to be used with most rendering controllers used in the industry.

Designed with a Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) architecture, the IMPAC-GE has high-performance floating-point processing capabilities. It has four floating point units (FPUs) with 256-word data memories and an integer processing unit (IPU) which assists in the homogenous XYZW-coordinate matrix transformation and RGB color calculations. It also includes dedicated division, square-root, and power calculators.

Development tools

Assembler, linker, software simulator and hardware debugger development tools are available separately for Mitsubishi's IMPAC-GE geometry engine.

Packaging and availability

Mitsubishi's IMPAC-GE geometry engine, M64591AFP, is now in volume production and is available in a 240-pin, heat-spreader quad flat pack (HQFP) package.

About Mitsubishi Electric and Mitsubishi Electronics America

One of the world's top 10 semiconductor suppliers, Mitsubishi Electric is also the leader in system-on-chip solutions for graphics applications. Mitsubishi pioneered the integration of DRAM, SRAM and logic on the same piece of silicon with its successful 3D-RAM and Cache DRAM (CDRAM) advanced graphics memory architectures and is the only company to successfully integrate memory -- especially DRAM, processor and other core logic functions in the same piece of silicon with its highly acclaimed eRAM(TM) technology. Mitsubishi markets its graphics memories and 3D graphics products in North America through the Electronic Device Group of Mitsubishi Electronics America, Inc. For more information, visit Mitsubishi Electric's worldwide semiconductor website at http://www.mitsubishichips.com.

Trademark Information

IMPAC, IMPAC-GE and eRAM are trademarks of Mitsubishi Electronics America, Inc. DirectX is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. OpenGL is a registered trademark of Silicon Graphics, Inc. Pentium is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation.

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