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11th June 1997
Diamond’s Fire GL 4000 Chosen for New Compaq
Professional Workstations
Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: DIMD), a leader in Internet multimedia, today
announced that Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE: CPQ) has selected Diamond’s Fire GL
4000 accelerator for two new Compaq Professional Workstation products, the Compaq
Professional Workstation 6000 and Professional Workstation 8000 multi-processor systems.
With the addition of Diamond’s Fire GL 4000 accelerator, these powerful Windows
NT-based workstations deliver top performance in 3D graphics-intensive applications in
areas such as 3D modelling, animation and industrial design. The Compaq Professional
Workstation 6000 and Professional Workstation 8000, along with the Fire GL 4000, have
recently received Pro/ENGINEER certification by Parametric Technology Corporation.
“3D professionals can turn to Compaq’s multi-processor systems and the high-end
graphics provided by the Fire GL 4000 to achieve true workstation-level performance,”
said Andy Brannan, Northern European Sales Director, Diamond Multimedia. “We are
pleased to be partnering with Compaq to offer our customers a superior alternative to
proprietary RISC/UNIX-based systems.”
“As part of Compaq’s new workstation products, the Fire GL 4000 delivers
outstanding 1280x1024, true colour, 3D graphics performance for today’s demanding
professional animation and design applications,” said Les Crudele, Vice President and
General Manager of Compaq’s Workstation Division. “With the additions of the
Compaq Professional Workstation 6000 and Professional Workstation 8000 to the Compaq
Professional Workstation family, our customers can select from a range of high-end
solutions designed to bring new levels of Windows NT computing power to the desktop.”
Diamond Fire GL 4000
The Diamond Fire GL 4000 incorporates the 3DPro/2mp chipset which includes three main
components: 3D-RAM frame buffer memory from Mitsubishi, a rendering processor based on
Evans and Sutherland’s (E&S) REALimage technology and Mitsubishi’s Cached
DRAM (CDRAM). 3D-RAM is the first high-performance graphics-specific memory to make the
transition into the PC space. Mitsubishi’s specialised graphics memories, combined
with E&S’ REALimage graphics technology, are helping to close the gap between
UNIX and PC solutions.
Utilising the new 3DPro architecture for accelerating graphics on the PC, the Fire GL 4000
is capable of rendering up to two million polygons per second in real-time. In addition to
advanced rendering and geometry acceleration, the Fire GL 4000 features hardware texture
mapping, true colour support for workstation resolutions up to 1280x1024 and a variety of
specialised 3D capabilities including Gouraud shading, perspective-corrected bilinear and
trilinear MIP mapping, anti-aliasing, alpha-blending and depth cueing. Diamond’s Fire
GL 4000 provides Compaq customers with top 3D graphics performance in OpenGL and Heidi
applications, particularly in a Windows NT 4.0 environment.
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