Dave Baumann
16-Apr-2002, 12:33
While it seems that we were just getting used to the prospect of the consumer PC graphics market looking more and more like a two horse race suddenly lots of other companies start surprising us - first SiS and now Trident.
Yesterday Trident issued this press release (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/020415/sfm128_1.html) telling us of their new DX8.1 compliant notebook graphics hardware. Here's a snip:
<blockquote>"WinHEC, SEATTLE, April 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Trident Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: TRID - news), is now sampling the XP4(TM), the industry's first 3D graphics processor for notebooks in 0.13um CMOS technology with a full-fledged DirectX 8.1 implementation in hardware. The XP4 achieves the highest 3D graphics performance at 1 billion pixels/sec with the lowest power dissipation at less than three watts (max). The resulting performance-per-watt is more than twice that of NVidia and ATI."</blockquote>Reading through the press release the specs seem a little out with their quoted transistor count when we compare it to other DX8.1 compliant hardware, so there is evidently some digging going to be need to find the details of this chip. However, from references in the PR it sounds as though they may have some architectural similarities with PowerVR's designs.
On a related note one of our readers has noticed that Anand (http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=712) recently dropped this following hint on new DX9 hardware:
<blockquote>"With DirectX 9 on the horizon the major hardware firms are diligently at work on their next-generation GPUs, from R300 to NV30 to something else being shown now behind closed doors - as usual, the graphics market always keeps us busy. Stay tuned. "</blockquote> Could this 'something else' finally be the fabled Matrox hardware?
There's a thread discussing the Trident chip here (http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=712) and one discussing the mysterious DX9 hardeware here (http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=717).
Yesterday Trident issued this press release (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/020415/sfm128_1.html) telling us of their new DX8.1 compliant notebook graphics hardware. Here's a snip:
<blockquote>"WinHEC, SEATTLE, April 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Trident Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: TRID - news), is now sampling the XP4(TM), the industry's first 3D graphics processor for notebooks in 0.13um CMOS technology with a full-fledged DirectX 8.1 implementation in hardware. The XP4 achieves the highest 3D graphics performance at 1 billion pixels/sec with the lowest power dissipation at less than three watts (max). The resulting performance-per-watt is more than twice that of NVidia and ATI."</blockquote>Reading through the press release the specs seem a little out with their quoted transistor count when we compare it to other DX8.1 compliant hardware, so there is evidently some digging going to be need to find the details of this chip. However, from references in the PR it sounds as though they may have some architectural similarities with PowerVR's designs.
On a related note one of our readers has noticed that Anand (http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=712) recently dropped this following hint on new DX9 hardware:
<blockquote>"With DirectX 9 on the horizon the major hardware firms are diligently at work on their next-generation GPUs, from R300 to NV30 to something else being shown now behind closed doors - as usual, the graphics market always keeps us busy. Stay tuned. "</blockquote> Could this 'something else' finally be the fabled Matrox hardware?
There's a thread discussing the Trident chip here (http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=712) and one discussing the mysterious DX9 hardeware here (http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=717).