NEWS RELEASE

Michael Hara - Public Relations
NVIDIA Corporation
Tel: 408.617.4000
e-mail: mhara@nvidia.com

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


NVIDIA AND SGS-THOMSON DELIVER KEY 3D GRAPHICS COMPONENT
TO INTEL’S VISUAL COMPUTING INITIATIVE

128-Bit 3D Multimedia Accelerator Delivers Breakthrough Performance Matched to
Pentium® II and AGP Platform


SUNNYVALE, Calif. – April 8, 1997 – SGS-THOMSON® Microelectronics, Inc. and NVIDIA™ Corporation today jointly introduced RIVA 128™, the first 128-bit 3D multimedia accelerator to support Intel® Corporation’s Visual Computing Initiative. RIVA 128 provides the state-of-the-art breakthrough 3D, 2D, video and imaging capabilities that enable visual computing platforms to deliver a new class of interactive, intuitive and life-like computing experiences to users.

NVIDIA and SGS-THOMSON Collaboration

RIVA 128 is the culmination of NVIDIA and SGS-THOMSON’s strategic collaboration which began in 1993. In total, NVIDIA and SGS-THOMSON have dedicated over 100 man years to bring RIVA 128 to market. "We combined NVIDIA’s 3D graphics innovation with SGS-THOMSON’s world-class video technology and semiconductor manufacturing capabilities to bring our customers products of uncompromising performance and quality," stated Tim Chambers, director of SGS-THOMSON’s Graphics Business Unit.

RIVA 128: 20 Billion Operations Per Second Dedicated to 3D Graphics

Real-time 3D graphics applications require intensive floating point computations. Today’s 3D accelerators deliver limited performance as the host CPU is relied upon to perform a critical function called "geometry setup". RIVA 128 incorporates a 5 GFLOPS floating-point setup engine to offload 3D processing from the host CPU, resulting in significantly higher frame rates and scene realism. RIVA 128 can process up to 5 million triangles per second.

Another major bottleneck for 3D applications is "pixel fill rate." For each pixel drawn on the screen, multiple arithmetic operations are performed in order to enhance the image quality, apply lighting, shading and multiple special effects. To render complex scenes in real-time, RIVA 128 utilizes a massively parallel pixel processor that is capable of sustaining 15 billion pixel operations per second, delivering over 100 million rendered pixels per second. The result is completely fluid animation.

With 3D performance up to 10 times that of mainstream multimedia accelerators and 2 times that of high performance "3D-only" accelerators, RIVA 128 defines a new performance standard for PC graphics.

RIVA 128: 128-Bit Architecture for Multimedia Visual Computing

The convergence of high-performance 2D and 3D graphics, digital video processing, and digital imaging puts tremendous processing burden on the graphics subsystem. 64-bit architectures severely lack the processing power and bandwidth to deliver real-time 3D graphics. RIVA 128 utilizes a "fast and wide" architecture (128-bit pipeline and 100MHz SGRAM) to achieve the 1.6Gbytes per second bandwidth necessary to support the immense computational requirements of interactive visual computing.

RIVA 128: Advanced Multimedia Capabilities

In addition to performance leadership in 2D and 3D graphics, RIVA 128 integrates advanced video processing technologies necessary to accelerate emerging multimedia applications such as DVD, Intercast, video phone, and TV display. Technologies such as scatter-gather DMA, color format conversion, scaling and filtering, and TV flicker-filtering complement the Pentium MMX to enhance the playback of high-quality digital video.

RIVA 128 directly addresses the pent-up demand for an integrated multimedia accelerator that delivers uncompromised performance in 2D, 3D, and digital video. Available mainstream multimedia accelerators severely lack the processing power to sustain real-time 3D graphics. On the other hand, high-performance "3D-only" accelerators do not integrate 2D and video, resulting in incompatibilities with many multimedia applications.

Industry Support for RIVA 128

"RIVA 128 provides the right set of 3D, 2D and video features that complement Intel’s Visual Computing Initiative," said Jim Nucci, AGP marketing manager for Intel. "RIVA 128’s 3D technology delivers compelling levels of realism at mainstream prices."

"To be successful in this market, a multimedia solution must provide both excellent 2D and 3D graphics performance and essential multimedia features in one package," stated Shane Long, vice president of sales and marketing for STB Systems, Inc. "For the first time, customers will not have to compromise their multimedia needs to get access to ultra fast 3D, or vice versa. With products based on RIVA 128, they will get the best of all worlds."

"The 3D multimedia accelerator market is exploding, said Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Associates (Tiburon, CA) . "Our research indicates there will be close to 40 million 3D controllers sold in 1997, 285% growth from last year. But things are going to be quite different in ’97. High performance devices like RIVA 128 are going to steal the show. The market is going to get fierce and the only strong, technical and fabrication-wise, companies are going to make it."


"As real-time 3D modeling experts , we have worked with many implementations of 3D graphics, from Onyx to Genesis," said Josh White, president of Vector Graphics. "RIVA 128’s performance gives us more artistic freedom that we expect from a PC platform and standard 3D API. Freedom from texture memory limits and complete acceleration of Direct3D allows us much higher face counts and texture detail."

"RIVA 128’s combination of fast VGA, world-class 2D and 3D graphics, excellent video, and support for both PCI 2.1 and AGP 1.0 will allow customers to accelerate high performance Pentium MMX and Pentium II," said H.C. Hung, Associate Vice President of Engineering of Asustek. "The high memory bandwidth in RIVA 128 will be very helpful in both 2D and 3D interactive graphics as well as real-time video."

Pricing and Availability

Available in production quantities Q2’97
$30 in quantities of 10,000 units

Company Information

NVIDIA Corporation designs, develops, markets, and sells highly integrated 3D multimedia accelerator chips for the mainstream PC market. NVIDIA’s mission is to innovate advanced 3D and multimedia technologies to enable mass market computing devices to deliver a breathtaking multimedia experience. NVIDIA is a privately held company with venture financing. Corporate headquarters is in California: NVIDIA Corporation, 1226 Tiros Way, Sunnyvale, CA 94086. (408) 617-4000. http://www.nvidia.com.

SGS-THOMSON Microelectronics is a global independent semiconductor company listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the Bourse de Paris. The company designs, develops, manufactures and markets a broad range of semiconductor integrated circuits (ICs) and discrete devices used in a wide variety of microelectronics applications, including telecommunication systems, computer systems, consumer products, automotive products and industrial automation and control systems.

NVIDIA and the NVIDIA logo are trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation. The SGS-THOMSON corporate logo is a registered trademark of SGS-THOMSON Microelectronics. RIVA 128 is a trademark of NVIDIA Corporation and SGS-THOMSON Microelectronics. Other notations of TM and ® are trademarks of their respective firms. All tradenames referenced are the service mark, trademark or registered trademark of their respective manufacturers.


HomePage | Product NVormation | Dear NV FAQ
NVenting with Nvidia | NVelope Your Senses | NterViews