Western Digital announces Paradise Bali 32-bit PCI graphics accelerator card; new board represents entry level for PCI systems, enhances Windows and games applications.

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 8, 1994--Western Digital Corp. (NYSE:WDC) Tuesday announced the introduction of its new Paradise Bali 32-bit accelerator card.

The Bali card is a 32-bit DRAM-based, PCI Windows accelerator that supports resolutions up to 1600 x 1200 and a palette of 16.8 million colors.

The Western Digital Paradise Bali card comes with 1MB of on-board memory (DRAM), upgradeable to 2MB, and supports a refresh rate of up to 75Hz. Comprehensive Bali Windows hardware acceleration functions include: hardware cursor, BITBLIT, line draw, rectangle fill, pattern fill, rectangle clipping, color expansion, transparency and raster operation.

"With the introduction of the Bali card, Paradise now offers a complete line of PCI products -- from high to low end," said Rob Horton, director of product marketing for Western Digital's Paradise business unit. "The new PCI Paradise cards all feature a common look and feel. The ability to offer a full PCI line is critical to our OEM and systems integrator customers."

The Paradise Bali card is based on the ARK1000PV graphics controller from ARK Logic Inc. With headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., ARK Logic specializes in the design of video graphics controller chips. The ARK1000PV has a 32-bit graphics accelerator engine with a 32-bit DRAM interface.

Bali provides true zero wait state capability, which is achieved through a combination of pipeline instruction buffering, a fast PCI bus interface, DRAM interface and drawing engine. This combination enables Bali to perform its graphics tasks rapidly without slowing the system processor.

"At 1024 x 768 x 256, the Bali 32-bit board is faster than most 1MB 64-bit solutions, and will greatly improve and enhance video performance in both text and video graphics modes," added Horton.

Software support for Paradise's Bali includes Windows 3.1, Windows NT, OS/2, Lotus 123, P-CAD, Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, AutoCAD R 12, 3D Studio, Autoshade and VESA BIOS extensions.

The suggested retail price for the Bali card is $169.99. Bulk-packaged products are shipping now, and first retail boxed shipments will begin in mid-November.

With headquarters in Irvine, Western Digital is a recognized leader in the design and manufacture of hard disk drives, integrated circuits and graphics controller board-level products. The company markets these products to leading systems manufacturers and selected resellers under the Western Digital, Caviar, Paradise and RocketCHIP brand names.

The company was founded in 1970 and has long been noted for its storage and graphics controller expertise and end-market systems-level design knowledge. -0-

Note to Editors: Western Digital, Caviar and Paradise are registered trademarks of Western Digital Corp. RocketCHIP is a trademark of Western Digital Corp. All other marks mentioned herein belong to other companies.

CONTACT: Western Digital Corp.

              Brenda Bennett, 714/932-6006
                or
              Mesa Communications Inc.
              Lisa Parkhurst, 714/932-5178