Exerpt from an article
When 3dfx announced that it was selling itself off to cover all of its debts and essentially going out of business, they had already received working Rampage silicon from the Fab. The very day they announced that they would be divesting itself of all interests, the first Sage (programmable T&L unit) was delivered. The single Rampage/Sage combination looked to have competed very well with the GeForce 3, but the cost of each card would have been significantly smaller than the GeForce 3. Much of these savings came from the actual chip costs. The Rampage rendering core was about 26 million transistors, while the Sage core was around 18 million. Producing each chip separately is much easier than producing a single 57 million transistor GeForce 3. The dual Rampage, single Sage board would have significantly outperformed the GeForce 3, and would have cost only slightly more to produce. 3dfx was in a very good position technologically, but financially the company could no longer exist and go on with its plans.
Nine months before this tragic event, 3dfx bought Gigapixel and its technology. 3dfx instantly integrated the engineering teams and the technology of the two. Things were going very, very well in terms of engineering development, and an exciting new chip was being designed. Fear was the codename, and it was going to be something special. Basically a Rampage rendering core redefined by Gigapixel technology, it would be around 58 million transistors and produce some of the most amazing graphics ever seen. That was the original plan, and tapeout was scheduled for March of 2001. The company didn?t make it that far. NVIDIA instead got the technology and all design work done to date. NVIDIA engineers were very excited to be able to see what 3dfx was working on, because it was in many ways superior to what NVIDIA had. Now, nearly 2 years after NVIDIA acquired 3dfx, we are about to see a totally new architecture that is a fusion of the 3dfx and NVIDIA technology.
The idea of a texturing computer is that texturing resources can be dynamically allocated to the pixel pipelines that most need them at that particular time. This helps the overall performance of the core by making it more flexible to the needs of the rendered scene. Add in more advanced texturing techniques, more texture passes per clock, more internal bandwidth, and you can get the basic idea what is in store. This will be NVIDIA?s first product that will feature greater than 32 bit color accuracy. Rampage had 52 bit color (13 bit RGBA vs 8 bit), and Fear was to have 64 bit color. Internal bandwidth was improved by using the Gigapixel technology, so the performance hit of higher color accuracy was not as significant as it would initially seem. Anti-aliasing would also be improved yet again in terms of quality and performance.
NVIDIA is staying with a single core design, so all functions will reside on one chip. Sage II was to be integrated with Fear, but NVIDIA will probably go with a beefed up, Dual Vertex Shader on this chip. The idea of 3dfx, Gigapixel, and NVIDIA technology wrapped in one core should give the competition night sweats. This combination will also receive a new name, as NVIDIA wants to differentiate it from the GeForce brand.
The Codename of the up and coming card is the NVIDIA Eclipse.
I WILL HAVE ONE
When 3dfx announced that it was selling itself off to cover all of its debts and essentially going out of business, they had already received working Rampage silicon from the Fab. The very day they announced that they would be divesting itself of all interests, the first Sage (programmable T&L unit) was delivered. The single Rampage/Sage combination looked to have competed very well with the GeForce 3, but the cost of each card would have been significantly smaller than the GeForce 3. Much of these savings came from the actual chip costs. The Rampage rendering core was about 26 million transistors, while the Sage core was around 18 million. Producing each chip separately is much easier than producing a single 57 million transistor GeForce 3. The dual Rampage, single Sage board would have significantly outperformed the GeForce 3, and would have cost only slightly more to produce. 3dfx was in a very good position technologically, but financially the company could no longer exist and go on with its plans.
Nine months before this tragic event, 3dfx bought Gigapixel and its technology. 3dfx instantly integrated the engineering teams and the technology of the two. Things were going very, very well in terms of engineering development, and an exciting new chip was being designed. Fear was the codename, and it was going to be something special. Basically a Rampage rendering core redefined by Gigapixel technology, it would be around 58 million transistors and produce some of the most amazing graphics ever seen. That was the original plan, and tapeout was scheduled for March of 2001. The company didn?t make it that far. NVIDIA instead got the technology and all design work done to date. NVIDIA engineers were very excited to be able to see what 3dfx was working on, because it was in many ways superior to what NVIDIA had. Now, nearly 2 years after NVIDIA acquired 3dfx, we are about to see a totally new architecture that is a fusion of the 3dfx and NVIDIA technology.
The idea of a texturing computer is that texturing resources can be dynamically allocated to the pixel pipelines that most need them at that particular time. This helps the overall performance of the core by making it more flexible to the needs of the rendered scene. Add in more advanced texturing techniques, more texture passes per clock, more internal bandwidth, and you can get the basic idea what is in store. This will be NVIDIA?s first product that will feature greater than 32 bit color accuracy. Rampage had 52 bit color (13 bit RGBA vs 8 bit), and Fear was to have 64 bit color. Internal bandwidth was improved by using the Gigapixel technology, so the performance hit of higher color accuracy was not as significant as it would initially seem. Anti-aliasing would also be improved yet again in terms of quality and performance.
NVIDIA is staying with a single core design, so all functions will reside on one chip. Sage II was to be integrated with Fear, but NVIDIA will probably go with a beefed up, Dual Vertex Shader on this chip. The idea of 3dfx, Gigapixel, and NVIDIA technology wrapped in one core should give the competition night sweats. This combination will also receive a new name, as NVIDIA wants to differentiate it from the GeForce brand.
The Codename of the up and coming card is the NVIDIA Eclipse.
I WILL HAVE ONE