STM pulls the plug on Kyro

Kristof, this topic however, is currenty highly related to your employment..will you still be in a job at the end of the week, or is PowerVR about to shut down...only joking...Do you know much about whats going on behind the scenes, or was this a bolt out of the blue, like it was for us shareholders on Friday???

 

out of the current vga companies doesn't Nvidea have the rights to Gigapixel (basically PVR or TBR, as I understand it) so they'd gain nothing but maybe more engineers familiar with the concept. And doesn't ATI have Z-buffer which is half PVR (AFAIK)... So that leave Matrox.... if they ever decide to reup their 32 line... but I don't want my next card to be a Misteek PVR!! Bitboys?? HA! STM (or IMGTech) is more likely too buy THEM out IMO ;-?. Via??? HMMMMMM.....
Hoe do you know it won't be a newcomer??? like 3com.... though they'd have too change their name to 4com ;-0

 

While I would love to comment it's very obvious that I can not do so. Sorry.

K-

 

Err...

 

Not sure what you mean here. If you mean that ATI have Z-buffer compression, hierarchial Z buffering and fast Z clear then no thats nowhere near TBR. Nobody knows if ATI have any TBR tech. But all this talk of ATI buying ST's graphics division is pointless anyway because any TBR tech ATI gained access to from buying ST's graphics division would still belong to IMGTEC not ATI, so ATI would not be able to do what they like with it, ATI would only have the licence to produce graphics chips based on IMGTEC's designs and IMGTEC would get money for each chip ATI sold. Also IMGTEC would develop the drivers.. which might actually be the only real plus point for ATI

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Teasy on 2002-02-11 01:26 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Teasy on 2002-02-11 01:29 ]</font>

 

I really hope someone picks up the licences and continue production models. Hopefully the new guys will shift focus to the mid-high end market and market TBR aggressivly. I've got me figures crossed till then.

 

To whom, exactly, were you refering..?

 

dksuiko,

Come on man I have no brand loyalty at all. I have owned cards from every single manufacturer on the planet.

Verite 1000
Voodoo 2
Savage 4
Voodoo 3 3500
Savage 2000
TNT 2 ultra
Geforce 2 MX
Kyro 2
Radeon 8500

Oh and an intel i815 for a while...

I have no agenda, I just call them as I see them. Perhaps if my analasys bothers some, perhaps their the ones with the lack of objectivity. I simply try to point out the facts as they are in black and white.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Hellbinder[CE] on 2002-02-11 10:06 ]</font>

 

Just try and make sure your black = #000000 and your white = #FFFFFF

 

It's fairly unlikely that ATi or nVidia would buy STM graphics division, they really wouldn't gain anything from it.

But does anyone have any ideas on who might buy STM grahpics division?

What are the chances of say Matrox buying STM graphics division? They've used PVR-Tech before (admittedly it was a long time ago).

 

I see only VIA as an potential buyer.

VIA would gain a lot ( cheap chipsets with highend 3D to counter NVidia and prestige when hopefully marketing highend 3D-chips as well ) and as Kristof stated "don't see it only negative".
IMHO only VIA would be willing to use PVR-tech to complement their business and VIA would be an improvement compared to the lackluster STM (from the postings in other forums I get the impression that IMG is happy to get rid of STM cause of their slowiness to release / market new chips )


Manfred

 

I think VIA are favourites, lets assume it is them from now on, just think of all those lovely integrated chipsets which IMG would love to see as well.

 

well, that would give very good position on graphics market. They already have S3 Graphics...

How about SIS? they have been going more higher end all the time, but they still have long way to go if they don't buy someone...

 

Hitachi could be an option to takeover from ST M. They have connections with ImgTec through Dreamcast SH3 and what about Toshiba.

Ok nothing is concrete, but hopefully something is brewing.

 

I'd be skeptical of Toshiba, didn't they develop the PS2's architecture? Of course that wouldn't prevent them from buying STM graphics division.

As for Hitachi, I wouldn't have thought that they would want to enter the PC graphics market that's just my opinion.

I would believe that Via or SiS would be more likely than either Toshiba or Hitachi IMO.

An integrated PVR graphics chipset? Hmm...

 

That would be cool.

SIS has shown interest in 3d graphics. They are taking little baby steps. For a Chipset manufacturer to have working T&amp;L on their graphics design shows some potential.

I would love to see SIS partner with Imagine/powervr. Some nice High performance Cards and some totally AWESOME industry leading intergrated video.

Could you guys see SIS 800 series chipsets with 200mhz 4800 designs, or even the vaunted Kyro 3???

Hmmmm....

Trident would not be bad either. Pair their nice Blade3D 2D core (with that nice DVD/Mpeg-4 decoding) with high perfomance PowerVR technology....

 

If it is via then they would probobly team Imagine with Their S3graphics division.

S3 was runored to be working on a TBR based architecture were'nt they????

 

Yeah...

&lt;dream-mode>
Think about it. 64bit QBM-memory @ 166MHz would give an bandwidth of 5,3 GB/sec; so an embedded Kyro 3 (PVR4) could run nearly at full speed and the main processor would have had enough bandwidth left for nearly uninterupted speed
&lt;/dream-mode>

 

My sources say that the graphics engineers from S3 are currently looking for placement in other jobs in the company and that there aren't any graphics chips in the works.

But my source isn't involved in the graphics side of business.

 

Bleh....

I'm hoping it is NOT Sis or Via or any other chipset-maker that buys-out STM's graphics division. To me, that would just seal the fate of PowerVR technology...and relegate it to a lifetime of mediocrity.

Come on IMG -- have some balls and buy-out STM's Graphics Division yourself! If you are that confident in your own technology, put your money where your mouth is!