Diamond, Mitsubishi and E&S Partner to deliver 3DPro Graphics Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: DIMD), Mitsubishi Electronics America (Mitsubishi), and Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation (NASDAQ: ESCC) today announced a partnership to deliver a new class of professional desktop 3D graphics, based on the 3DPro family of products. Diamond Multimedia will become the first company to introduce high-end graphics accelerators utilising the 3DPro/2mp chipset, which was co-developed by Mitsubishi and Evans & Sutherland (E&S). The new 3D graphics accelerators will offer full OpenGL acceleration for the Windows NT platform. Diamond Multimedia will design, build and market 3DPro-based graphics accelerator products for OEMs & end-users while Mitsubishi and E&S will continue to develop the 3DPro family of technologies and products, using REALimage technology. Diamond's 3DPro-based accelerators will join the company's established line of award-winning professional 3D graphics products under the Fire GL brand and will target the professional 3D CAD, visualisation, simulation and digital content creation markets, and is expected to be available in the second quarter of 1997. "Our Fire GL graphics accelerators with the new 3DPro/2mp chipset will offer 3D professionals what we believe is the most powerful PC-based solution ever offered for workstation graphics," said Andy Brannan, Northern European Sales Director, Diamond Multimedia, "Furthermore, our competitive pricing will make them highly cost-effective." Diamond's new 3DPro-based Fire GL graphics accelerators will address the performance needs of the high-end professional graphics market, which requires features that were only previously available on UNIX workstations. In addition to advanced 3D rendering, setup-geometry acceleration and real-time texture mapping capabilities, the 3DPro/2mp chipset performs antialiasing and bilinear and trilinear MIP mapping functions in hardware. The 3DPro/2mp chipset is optimised to exceed the performance limitations of "traditional" technology and is comprised of three key components: the DPro/2mp rendering processor based on REALimage technology from E&S, the 3DPro/2mp frame buffer, which utilises Mitsubishi's award-winning 3D-RAM memory architecture; and the 3DPro/2mp texture memory, based on Mitsubishi's Cached DRAM (CDRAM). "The 3DPro/2mp chipset has received excellent response from software vendors as well as hardware manufacturers," said Stephen Hester, Executive Vice President of Mitsubishi & VSIS, Inc. "Intel's Andy Grove demonstrated E&S' REALimage technology at Comdex 1996 as the graphics capability that will be available in the PCs of the future. With the combined expertise of all of these companies, that future is here today. 3DPro began as a collaboration to break the price/performance barrier - the addition of Diamond Multimedia to the effort will enable worldwide sales and support of 3DPro-based solutions." "Diamond Multimedia is demonstrating its market leadership by being the first to develop a graphics accelerator based on the 3DPro chipset," said Rick Maule, Vice President and General Manager of Desktop Graphics at Evans & Sutherland. "The combination of E&S's high-performance 3D graphics expertise and Mitsubishi's specialised graphics memories represents what we all believe to be breakthrough technology. Content providers in the multimedia authoring, simulation, visualisation and CAD industries can benefit from this new level of price/performance." About Diamond Multimedia Diamond Multimedia is driving the Internet multimedia market by providing interactivity and connectivity solutions for home, business and professional desktop computer users, enabling them to create, access and experience compelling new media content from their desktops and through the Internet. Diamond accelerates multimedia from the Internet to the hard drive with products that include the Stealth and Monster series of media accelerators, the Fire series of professional 3D graphics and SCSI I/O data accelerators, and the Supra series of modems and ISDN adapters. Diamond also markets multimedia and video phone upgrade kits. Headquartered in San Jose, CA, Diamond has sales, marketing and technical support facilities in Vancouver (Wash.), Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, Starnberg (Germany), Paris and Winnersh (U.K.). Diamond's products are sold through local and international distributors as well as directly to major retailers, VARs and OEMs worldwide. Diamond's common stock is traded on the NASDAQ Stock Market under the symbol DIMD About Evans & Sutherland Evans & Sutherland (E&S) develops and manufactures hardware and software for highly realistic visual systems that produce vivid 3D graphics and synthetic environments. The company has delivered high-quality visual systems for simulation and training to the civil aviation, defence, and commercial industries, including digital studios, museums, planetariums, and location-based entertainment centres throughout the world. Founded in 1968, E&S is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. About Mitsubishi Electric Mitsubishi Electric is a transnational corporation that focuses on developing technology-based products for industries ranging from communications to consumer to industrial. The company is a world-class supplier of semiconductors and electronic products for visual computing. Mitsubishi combines its systems-level expertise and high-level silicon process technology to provide chip, chip-set, and system-on-a-chip solutions. Mitsubishi Electric groups responsible for 3DPro include its Japan-based IC design and water fabrication entities, and its Sunnyvale, California-based systems design and engineering company VSIS, Inc. About VSIS VSIS, Inc. (pronounced "Vee-sis") is a Silicon Valley start-up company incorporated in Delaware on April 1, 996, with 100 percent venture capital funding provided by Mitsubishi Electronics America, Inc. VSIS' mission is to address the emerging systems-level applications requirements of North American customers and to define and design chipset and system-on-a-chip solutions to meet those needs. VSIS, Inc. is responsible for contributions in R&D and all sales and marketing of the 3DPro chipset products. VSIS and the VSIS logo are trademarks, and "The
System Is The Chip" is a service mark of VSIS, Inc., a Mitsubishi Electric America,
Inc. group company. Mitsubishi and the Mitsubishi logo are registered trademarks of
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation in the U.S., Japan and other countries. E&S and
REALimage are registered trademarks of Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation, Salt
Lake City, Utah. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. OpenGL is a
registered trademark of Silicon Graphics, Inc. |
| Diamond Multimedia is driving the interactive multimedia market by providing advanced solutions for home, business and professional desktop computer users, enabling them to create, access and experience compelling new media content from their desktops and through the Internet. Diamond accelerates multimedia from the Internet to the hard drive with products that include the Stealth and Viper® series of media accelerators, the Monster series of entertainment 3D and sound accelerators, the Fire series of professional 3D and SCSI accelerators, and the Supra® series of modems. Diamond also markets DVD and video phone kits. Diamond's common stock is traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol DIMD, and its web site addresses are www.diamondmm.de (Europe/German), www.diamondmm.co.uk (Europe/English), www.diamondmm.fr (Europe/French), and www.diamondmm.com (USA). For further information please contact::
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