finnish Talouselämä -magazine article about Bitboys.

[Nappe1]

the original source as finnish: http://www.talouselama.fi/doc.te?f_id=404542

thanks to Nemesis77 for translation and diging up the whole article.

Finnish Bitboys will be making a graphics core that will power third-generation mobile phones for major international electronics-company. According to news received by Talouselämä, the company in question is a big japanese manufacturer.

Co-operation means news beginning for Bitboys, a start of real business and salvation.

Until last spring, company was developing a product for PC's with no revenue. The end was near since last round of financing failed last spring. They were forced to close their Dallas office.

Currently, Bitboys operates with 21 employees in Noormarkku and Espoo. According to their CEO Juha Taipale, their revenue for the current quarter will increase to 700,000 euros, and operating profit will rise to 150,000 euros.

"Now we are well financed by sales" Taipale says. He refuses to name their client.

Bitboys' technology is vector based, which is considerably faster on mobile devices than bitmap graphics coming from PC-environment. Vectors do the same thing, but they require less power.

at least Kristof will have something to say this. since August he has had to all threads that are talking about Bitboys SVG chip.

I am all ears to hear what's wrong with it now.

 

[Kristof]

Sounds good. But it will be wait and see in the phones market since most telecoms are in a severe slump period and reluctant to adopt new technology.

Is this a financial magazine, or a general news site, or what ?

And do we still assume that this "big japanese partner" is some "division" of NEC ?

K-

 

[Nappe1]

Sounds good. But it will be wait and see in the phones market since most telecoms are in a severe slump period and reluctant to adopt new technology.

Is this a financial magazine, or a general news site, or what ?

And do we still assume that this "big japanese partner" is some "division" of NEC ?

K-

okay, I am talking here by myself and I can't 100 % sure that things are way I am stating, because all of this is officially unconfirmed. But here we go.
Talouselämä translates to Economy life, so it's financial magazine. BB's new fab partner is NEC, but I don't know for sure, if we are talkinga also a buyer of chip / core. their first SVG core customer is one of those things they don't want to talk about at all.

(Just like I knew very little about Hammer before Dave Barron released it's specs. Since September 2001, I knew there was something on the works called Hammer but that it was all about until I got confirmation it being trashed on day after launch of new Bitboys web pages. so, that also explains my outrageous behaviour on the boards at the same moment when NEC was removed from partners list. so removing it and my anger was jus co-indidence. My apologies about that. I definately need a break.)

that customer was one of major things making the decision to move to the PDA / Cellular market; they had a semi finished product and a customer for it. Also they were desperately running out of money for continuing "Hammer project".

 

[Tahir2]

Hammer and Thor.. bah humbug I am stil waiting for news on Odin

Is the interest coming from Kristof because of MBX I wonder.. if so then it is a good sign for the BB's already.

 

[Nappe1]

Hammer and Thor.. bah humbug I am stil waiting for news on Odin

Is the interest coming from Kristof because of MBX I wonder.. if so then it is a good sign for the BB's already.

they did have Axe too.. and well afaik it was dual chip capable which would most likely have turned it to "Tappara" (Vikings' flip-around two blade battle Axe.)

misae: if you would be a nordic, you would know how deadly weapon that is...

(46 GB/s real bandwidth (>6 GB/s for textures (with single chip reference design memory speeds.), about 40 GB/s on eDRAM), 8x2 configuration, Dx8 compliant... oh well... we never will know what it would have been capable doing...)

damn, I still want one of those. just the idea of having 1024 bit on die memory bus with cross bar style memory controller with 11 channels...

oh well... enough this cry for Axe...

EDIT: some quite small fixing...

 

[Tahir2]

I am from Engerlund (England) but where my parents come from the most dangerous weapon is a Rickshaw and Kabadi (a form of wrestling, a bit like Sumo wrestling for skinny people).

I think that if Infineon did not have financial problems and even he original Glaze3D was released then others would have jumped on the eDRAM bandwagon... at the moment it seems the only mainstream company that has done this is Nintendo and their Gamecube.

Cost/Performance ratio must be pretty nice on the GC at least.

 

[Gollum]

forgive me if I'm wrong, but what about the eDRAM on PS2?

 

[Tahir2]

You are forgiven even tho' you are totally right

 

[Kristof]

Hammer and Thor.. bah humbug I am stil waiting for news on Odin

Is the interest coming from Kristof because of MBX I wonder.. if so then it is a good sign for the BB's already.

Just healthy personal competitive interest

IMHO Keeping track of what a competitor, no matter how big or small, is doing is key to a companies own success...

 

[Onslaught]

It's always nice to know the BBs are alive and kickin'. 8)

I foresee a big future for them (my god-like fortune telling abilities tell me so ).

Nice specs on the dual-chip AXE card there Nappe1. I would also have bought it on the spot (to hell with DX9...just kidding).

Kristof: They do say "Know your enemies and know yourself and victory will always be yours", hehe. BTW I'm running a Kyro 2 in my rig right now...ain't I a good boy?

 

[Tahir2]

Kissin ass will not get u any brownie points.. or maybe it will

 

[Onslaught]

Hehehe, that's what I was countin' on.

 

[Nappe1]

Nice specs on the dual-chip AXE card there Nappe1. I would also have bought it on the spot (to hell with DX9...just kidding).

well, actually... if you change a card once a year, and everything would have gone like originally planned, you would be changing it right now to DX9 card again.

yes, both single and dual chip was coming out on last year COMDEX originally.
but again, gone is gone and that doesn't matter anymore.

personally, I am strugling between buying Parhelia now, perhaps going some stop gap, or maybe still staying few months on AIW Radeon, while waiting something new from M...

if I only could be sure...

 

[Sage]

actually, kissing ass usually gets you a diff kind of "brownie points" than you were hoping

 

[KimB]

It's always nice to know the BBs are alive and kickin'. 8)

I foresee a big future for them (my god-like fortune telling abilities tell me so ).

I just have to say that even if they end up doing quite well in the mobile market, they're not going to be able to compete against the likes of nVidia and ATI in the desktop market, at least, not for a very long time.

21 employees? nVidia has about 1200 engineers. Only about two orders of magnitude difference in manpower...

Still, this is a smart move by them. By instead focusing on a niche market that's not dominated by such huge players as nVidia and ATI, they stand a chance of making it somewhere. Given enough time, they may be able to expand to other markets, but it will take a long time.

 

[Sage]

i think that it's BB's unique way of thinking that will make them money. I doubt that they will ever get another of their own chips out for PCs but that they will be a good source to go to when you want something special to make your next big chip really pack a wallop. the BB guys understand one thing and thats innovation. that's why they will always be around in the back room comming up with tech that the big boys will eventually have to adopt.

 

[PC-Engine]

Sounds good. But it will be wait and see in the phones market since most telecoms are in a severe slump period and reluctant to adopt new technology.

Is this a financial magazine, or a general news site, or what ?

And do we still assume that this "big japanese partner" is some "division" of NEC ?

K-

The two largest Japanese 3G phone makers are NEC and Matsushita/Panasonic. Also the I-mode infrastructure in Japan are using mostly NEC telecom equipment not just their handsets. NTT DoCoMo has also just launched its new 3G upgrade to I-mode which is called FOMA in October. The only two 3G phones used with FOMA are NEC models. FOMA handsets offers speeds 5-40 times higher than I-mode handsets. Also NEC had recently partnered with Hutchison.

http://www.nec.co.jp/press/en/0210/2301.html

http://www.nec.co.jp/press/en/0210/0201.html

http://www.nec.co.jp/3g-mobile/

I also read on EET that NEC will be re-entering the US mobile phone market. I think ATT will be offering the NEC 3G phones.

 

[Ailuros]

.....since August he has had to all threads that are talking about Bitboys SVG chip.

Well besides the "healthy competitive interest", there are more than one MBX licences published so far. I personally would postpone that interest, once the first BB licence becomes public, but that's just me

 

[Nappe1]

21 employees? nVidia has about 1200 engineers. Only about two orders of magnitude difference in manpower...
...they may be able to expand to other markets, but it will take a long time.

and it took "took a long time" to nVidia make to market leader position after they totally screwed up with NV1 and NV2? So, long time for you is, what?? 2 years or perhaps even 3?

or are you saying that they had already 1200 engineers when they started the NV3 project practically from scratch after two pretty big failures?

I am not saying that we would see PC card from Bitoys within few years, (Maybe never, actually... they are pretty sure about pulling out totally from that market.) but (*had nice and easy way to say this but it didn't worked*) why on earth you have to watch things thru those damn nVidia glasses? with your logic, nVidia would be still small and insignificant, without enough man power to battle against BIG AND ONLY 3DFX.

gimme a break, will you?

 

[Sage]

true, but as the level of technology increases, so does the initial investment (number of engineers, equipment, and money). I think BB has the capability to come out with a competitive chip right now but i dont thinik it would be high-end.