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The Graphics Accelerator
The market for graphics subsystems was, until the advent of multimedia, relatively simple to follow. First there was VGA, developed by IBM in 1987, which made it possible for graphics card manufacturers to offer higher resolutions (640 x 480) and more on screen colors. With the growth in popularity of Windows there came a strong demand for 2D hardware acceleration to offload the host Central Processing Unit (CPU) of graphics processing tasks, and increase the overall performance of the Graphical User Interface (GUI). The operating system of Windows and its applications needed as much of the CPU time as possible, and that was slowing down the graphics. Manufacturers added 2D graphics functions to move Windows around the screen much faster, hardware cursors to track the movement of pointers across the display, and processing power to fill areas of the screen with color at much faster rates. Hence, the Accelerated VGA (AVGA) chip was born, also known as the Windows accelerator, or GUI accelerator. The Windows accelerator is the staple product in mainstream computing.

Multimedia provided a new set of graphics challenges by adding audio, and digital video components to the 2D graphics mix. Today it is common to find that many AVGA products also support digital video functions in hardware. Therefore, if you have been used to seeing postage sized video on your computer screen you need to move up to the multimedia accelerator. The multimedia accelerator normally has functions that allow scaling of video in x and y directions with hardware, and convert the video signal of digital video into computer graphic RGB components in hardware. Some may also have hardware decompression of digital video as well.

The development of graphics subsystem has followed a simple pattern partly dictated by the size of the computer’s screen, partly influenced by the GUI, and partly influenced by graphics chips. The early VGA standard of 640 x 480 pixel resolution was adequate for the 14 inch monitors that existed on most systems at that time. As displays got bigger, resolutions got higher. Today, 17 inch monitors are quite common as are the 1024 x 768 resolution images that fill them up.

From VGA to multimedia accelerators the trend has been towards putting more visual information on the screen. 3D is a continuation of that trend. Large amounts of visual data can be compressed into the physical space of a computer screen if it is displayed in 3D. Real time 3D graphics then lets users navigate through that information with ease.

Games Engines
The first rule of computer games is that there are no rules. Traditionally, games developers are more interested in the impact of their programs rather than following engineering fashion. Although there are many 3D APIs on the market today, and Direct3D is getting a lot of developers’ attention, some choose to create their own 3D games APIs, or engines. The custom games engine is one way for developers to get to do the really imaginative feats of graphics programming that push the design envelope to the its outer edges.

Descent Screen Shot
There is nothing more satisfying to a games developer than to be able to access directly the hardware components of a system. Three big name games developers have developed their own games engines that work optimally with hardware acceleration. Sega’s Virtua Fighter, Papyrus’ NASCAR Racer, and Interplay’s Descent II, are true 3D experiences. Each has its own unique engine that makes the most use of particular 3D graphics hardware acceleration.

No Compromise Graphics While the talk of 3D graphics is exciting enough in its own right, there is a new breed of product coming to market that combines the best elements of 2D, 3D and video. These products combine fast 2D graphics, surpassing the performance of today’s Windows accelerators, with high quality, accelerated 3D graphics, and digital video playback at full frame rates. These products are ushering in the era of no compromise graphics and are making their way onto standard desktop machines everywhere.

Companies, like S3, that have a rich history of producing high performance graphics accelerator chips for the PC, are leading the market in compromise graphics technology. These companies believe that 3D graphics acceleration should not mean that traditional 2D graphics speed need be forsaken. In fact, these companies believe that fast 3D graphics require even faster 2D in order to be effective. No compromise graphics is an attempt to ensure that all the components of multimedia graphics run at sufficiently high levels of performance to create a compelling experience. S3’s ViRGE graphics accelerator, for example, is one of the fastest Windows accelerators on the market, yet, it is recognized as a breakthrough 3D accelerator and digital video engine. Ultimately, the aim of manufacture


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