S3 Graphics
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S3 Graphics, Ltd. was an American computer graphics company. The company sold the
3dfx Interactive, ATI and Nvidia, it merged with hardware manufacturer Diamond Multimedia in 1999. The resulting company renamed itself to SONICblue Incorporated, and, two years later, the graphics portion was spun off into a new joint effort with VIA Technologies. The new company focused on the mobile graphics market. VIA Technologies' stake in S3 Graphics was purchased by HTC
in 2011.
History
Logo used from 1989 to 1997
S3 was founded and incorporated in January 1989 by Dado Banatao and Ronald Yara. It was named S3 as it was Banatao's third startup company.[1]
The company's first products were among the earliest
OEMs. S3 took over the high end 2D market just prior to the popularity of 3D accelerators.[3]
S3's first 3D accelerator chips, the
S3TC, which became an industry standard. S3 bought Number Nine's assets in 1999,[4] then merged with Diamond Multimedia.[6] The resulting company renamed itself SONICblue, refocused on consumer electronics, and sold its graphics business to VIA Technologies.[7] Savage-derived chips were integrated into numerous VIA motherboard chipsets
. Subsequent discrete derivations carried the brand names DeltaChrome and GammaChrome.
In July 2011,
HTC Corporation announced they were buying VIA Technologies' stake in S3 Graphics, thus becoming the majority owner of S3 Graphics.[8] In November, the United States International Trade Commission ruled against S3 in a patent dispute with Apple.[9]
Graphics controllers
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- S3 911, 911A (June 10, 1991) - S3's first Windows accelerators (16/256-color, high-color acceleration)
- S3 924 - 24-bit true-coloracceleration
- S3 801, 805, 805i - mainstream DRAM VLBWindows accelerators (16/256-color, high-color acceleration)
- S3 928 - 24/32-bit true-color acceleration, DRAM or VRAM
- S3 805p, 928p - S3's first PCI support
- S3 Vision864, Vision964 (1994) - 2nd generation Windows accelerators (64-bit wide framebuffer). Support MPEG-1 video acceleration.
- S3 Vision868, Vision968 - S3's first motion video accelerator (zoom and RGBconversion)
- VGA) accelerator. The 64-bit versions were S3's most successful product range.
- OEMsmainly because of low price and excellent 2D-performance.
- Transformation and Lighting(S3TL) co-processor.
- Aurora64V+, S3 ViRGE/MX, SuperSavage, SavageXP- Mobile chipsets
- ProSavage, Twister, UniChrome, Chrome 9 - Integrated implementations of Savage chipset for VIAmotherboards
- Chrome 440 series, Chrome 500 series - Discrete cards post acquisition by VIA.
The Chrome S27 of the Chrome 20 series - S3 GenDAC, SDAC - VGA RAMDAC with high/true-color bypass (SDAC had integrated PLLs, dot-clocks, and hardware Windows cursor)
Media chipsets
- Sonic/AD sound chipset - A programmable, sigma-delta audio DAC, featuring an integrated PLL, stereo 16-bit analogue output
- SonicVibes - PCI Audio Accelerator
- Scenic/MX2 - MPEGDecoder
References
- ^ Uday Kapoor (2013-08-13). "Oral History of Diosdado "Dado" Banatao" (PDF). Computer History Museum. Retrieved 2021-04-29.
- PC Magazine. Vol. 12, no. 1. p. 228.
- ^ Singer, Graham (2021-01-07). "The History of the Modern Graphics Processor". Techspot.com. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
- ^ a b Singer, Graham (2020-12-04). "History of the Modern Graphics Processor, Part 2". Techspot.com. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
- ^ Lilly, Paul (2009-05-19). "From Voodoo to GeForce: The Awesome History of 3D Graphics". PC Gamer. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
- ZDNet. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
- ZDNet. 2000-11-01. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
- ^ McGlaun, Shane (6 July 2011). "VIA, WTI Sell Stakes in S3 Graphics to HTC". DailyTech. Archived from the original on 9 July 2011. Retrieved 28 January 2014.
- ^ Lowensohn, Josh (2011-11-21). "S3 Graphics' case against Apple collapses at ITC". CNET. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to S3 Graphics.