Nokia buys 14% of Bitboys
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Megadrive1988
Veteran
slightly off topic, though not completely...
I was really excited in the late 1990s when TriTech Pyramid3D was getting hype. It hyped me.
that looked like Xbox-level graphics if not better.
one of their chips, TR25201 I think, definitally had a geometry engine on it, and if they had released it in a consumer~gamer card, it would've beaten NV10 GeForce out by a few years, as far as being the first affordable GPU~card with T&L
but... then Pyramid3D morphed into Glaze3D, then XBA, then I forget what happened. they went into mobile graphics....
*if* the original Pyramid3D family had been what I thought it was going to be, and *if* it had been what it was hyped to be.... then this is the only other graphics chip besides a Lockheed Martin Real3D chip that I would have wanted for Sega's successor to Saturn. Sure, PowerVR is great (better than what 3Dfx had at the time) but it was not my first choice for Dreamcast graphics chip. the TR25201 was a 1 million polygon per second GPU in 1996-1997. that's about on the same timeline as PowerVR1 PCX1 and PCX2, but way ahead in polygon performance. imagine a 2nd-gen Pyramid3D GPU for 1999.
geez, I went way off topic, sorry.
I was really excited in the late 1990s when TriTech Pyramid3D was getting hype. It hyped me.
that looked like Xbox-level graphics if not better.
one of their chips, TR25201 I think, definitally had a geometry engine on it, and if they had released it in a consumer~gamer card, it would've beaten NV10 GeForce out by a few years, as far as being the first affordable GPU~card with T&L
but... then Pyramid3D morphed into Glaze3D, then XBA, then I forget what happened. they went into mobile graphics....
*if* the original Pyramid3D family had been what I thought it was going to be, and *if* it had been what it was hyped to be.... then this is the only other graphics chip besides a Lockheed Martin Real3D chip that I would have wanted for Sega's successor to Saturn. Sure, PowerVR is great (better than what 3Dfx had at the time) but it was not my first choice for Dreamcast graphics chip. the TR25201 was a 1 million polygon per second GPU in 1996-1997. that's about on the same timeline as PowerVR1 PCX1 and PCX2, but way ahead in polygon performance. imagine a 2nd-gen Pyramid3D GPU for 1999.
geez, I went way off topic, sorry.
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Pyramid3D project was finalized. TR25204 was the last version being developed with VGA core included. final reference boards were made on summer 1997. too bad that Tritech went belly up on next autumn (thanks to lawsuit that they lost on audioside.) , so that there were no maker for the chips. (project was late and technologically it was ahead of it's time. target process it was designed was 0.50µm or something close to that, which again made chip quite big, though It's worst problem would have been very limited memory bandwidth: 800MBps.
eventually Pyramid3D rights ended up to VLSI Oy that didn't do much with it. They did develop the video side of the chip / card further, but it never took of a product. chip's all specs and information were available still few years ago when I last looked up it.
again, Glaze3D never was finalized as chip, but AXE again... ...well, I'll put it this way: several Beyond3D forum members have AXEs, though most of them are non-working A-revisions. Only few B-revision chips are outside the company. (B-revision was final one, and confirmed to be working. Too bad that not a single ref. design board do not exist. Only debug boards. (dual Avalanche again is the monstrous ghost, that existed at least as specification. some sources claim that even board was designed, though it never was even close to be materialized.)
and if someone has not seen these yet,
Here's my two DX8/VS1.0/PS1.1 12MB eDRAM chips:
http://rp-design.totalnfs.net/omat/picture1.jpg
http://rp-design.totalnfs.net/omat/picture2.jpg
eventually Pyramid3D rights ended up to VLSI Oy that didn't do much with it. They did develop the video side of the chip / card further, but it never took of a product. chip's all specs and information were available still few years ago when I last looked up it.
again, Glaze3D never was finalized as chip, but AXE again... ...well, I'll put it this way: several Beyond3D forum members have AXEs, though most of them are non-working A-revisions. Only few B-revision chips are outside the company. (B-revision was final one, and confirmed to be working. Too bad that not a single ref. design board do not exist. Only debug boards. (dual Avalanche again is the monstrous ghost, that existed at least as specification. some sources claim that even board was designed, though it never was even close to be materialized.)
and if someone has not seen these yet,
Here's my two DX8/VS1.0/PS1.1 12MB eDRAM chips:
http://rp-design.totalnfs.net/omat/picture1.jpg
http://rp-design.totalnfs.net/omat/picture2.jpg
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The next Ngage will be an open platform type (At least among Nokia's products) because if it's not it won't matter much more than what the Ngage or the Ngage OD mattered.Nappe1 said:so, anyone still is 100% sure that next nGage platform will have MBX because OMAP processors?
Nokia might just need some 3D acceleration for all its products, or more exactly, for their game oriendted Cellphones.
More like 3DSMAX level, since that's what it is, a render.Megadrive1988 said:
It took the handheld graphic revolution for the BitBoys to be anything but vaporware creators.
yep, for mainstream they have gotten their eye on G12. that's pretty sure.Vysez said:
hehe
funny thing is that this "Render" was run on realtime in launch that took place in Assembly 1997. I can't promise that I would have an access to working Pyramid3D ref. board and this "render" tech demo, but I can say that I have more than once tried to get my hands on it. I DO KNOW for sure that there is whole bunch of these cards laying around somewhere in certain company's storage.
IF I am able to get one of these on my hands, I can try to make some sort of "read between the lines" post about it. That is just because that project didn't went well from any of three companies taking part on it and they aren't really keen showing it's "blazing" performance. I have been told that it was "ok" to it's time, but because general public has certain image of their company, there's great risk to be misunderstood and not by accidentally.
did I tell this all slimey enough?
