Ex Real3D Engineer :

“This chip was a rasterizer, as part of a GE Simulator, designed over 20 years ago. This chip did a single quadrant, of one stage, of a Warnock windower.

The Warnock algorithm quadrisects screen space and detects which of the four quadrants a primitive (point, line, triangle), intersects. This is one stage. Results of this stage move to a second stage, that does a further quadrisect. This continues though as many stages as required to get to a single pixel (or in machines that do many pixels in parallel, a group of pixels. E.G. starting with a 512x512 window, stage 0 would yield 256x256, stage 1 128x128, stage 2 64x64, stage 3 32x32, etc. SO you need log2(n) stages to get to single pixel. But if you window down to 8 by 8, e.g. the last 3 stages aren't necessary. This chip does 1 quad of one stage. So 4 of those were needed per quad. I.e.. a 5 stage implementation would need 20 of these.

This was one of the first so-called "image generators" that used custom designed ASICs. Up till then off-the-shelf parts were used which made for enormous machines (consider that a single part might have just 4 and-gates in it!!).

This is a large ASIC, packaged in ceramic. The lid is off and you can see the surface of the die.

This part contained approximate 250 thousand transistors, and I believe clock speed was 12.5 Megahertz.

This chip was used in high-end military flight simulators, an image would be projected into a large 1/2 dome surface, head tracking would attempt to keep the most pixels concentrated at the centre of the field of view. The systems were impressive, with cockpit mock-ups, projection systems, etc. the graphics was just a small part of it."

Creative 3D Blaster VLB CT6200 - Stereo Photo Limited Edition

A Multimedia PCI card released in 1995 and most commonly sold to retail as the Diamond Edge 3D under license from EDGE Games. It featured a complete 2D/3D graphics core based upon quadratic texture mapping, VRAM Memory (DRAM for the STG2000), an integrated 32-channel 350 MIPS playback-only sound card, and two Sega Saturn compatible joypad ports. As such, it was intended to replace the 2D graphics card, Sound Blaster-compatible audio solutions, and 15-pin joystick ports, then prevalent on IBM PC compatibles.

May 1995, two-year-old startup NVIDIA made a long awaited entrance in the graphics market with their two chip solution to accelerate wavetable audio, video playback and 3-D graphics. Although the NV1 was NVIDIA's first product, the chip was very advanced for its time.

To give you an idea of the state of the industry at the time, "MPC Level 2" had just been declared to promote audio and video technologies on the computer. CD-ROMs and 16-bit sound cards just started growing in popularity. Graphics accelerators at the time supported full motion video as well as photo-realistic, high-color 15-bit and higher color depths. It was in this environment that NVIDIA developed its first graphics chip with the help of SGS-Thomson Microelectronics (ST Micro). Here was fledgling NVIDIA integrating all these multimedia functions and more into one expansion board.

Why did NVIDIA choose such an integrated solution?

Alongside the original announcement, Michael Hara (NVIDIA’s director of developer marketing) said the following : "What the consumer is used to is high quality for a low cost. But for the PC, the software developers don't know what the consumer is going to buy, so he assumes no video, GUI acceleration and an 8-bit SoundBlaster. We believe that this is the next level of integration for multimedia in the PC. Compressing high performance multimedia functionality onto a single multimedia accelerator will ensure software developers a common performance baseline to work from, and in turn assures consumers will get the most from the multimedia experience.”

When the NV1 was produced, many of the 3D standards we now take for granted had not yet been decided. Since polygons had not yet become the standard for 3D gaming, NVIDIA chose to implement Quadratic Texture Maps, not polygons, as its graphics primitive. NVIDIA's Chief Technical Officer, Curtis Priem, was enamoured by quadratic texture maps, and as CTO, he made quadratic texture maps the standard at NVIDIA. Whereas today's 3D cards must use many small polygons to replicate smoothness, the NV1 used the curved sides of polygons. This allowed the NV1 to display smoother looking 3D models with fewer calculations. Textures were stored in system RAM and pulled over the PCI or VESA Local Bus as needed - exactly what AGP promised a few years later.

The NV1 also integrated a playback-only sound card. With 32 concurrent audio channels of 16-bit CD-quality audio and hardware phase shifting for simplistic 3D sound, the NV1 was actually more impressive than many first generation PCI sound cards. The MIDI playback used a 6MB patch set stored in system RAM and was even Fat Labs certified.

The NV1 featured direct support for Sega Saturn gamepads and joysticks instead of using the traditional 15-pin game port. The Saturn controllers could be used in any DirectInput compliant games, including the hardware accelerated ports of Virtua Fighter, Virtua Cop, and Panzer Dragoon.

The Audio, video and graphics were hewed together using an internal 600MByte/sec packet bus. The device also interfaced to a 64-bit PCI for maximum transfer rates.

Instead of making the chips themselves, NVIDIA took a different avenue by establishing an early relationship with SGS-Thomson Micro. By gaining manufacturing stability, NVIDIA gave a high-volume consumer segment to SGS-Thomson, which introduced a DRAM-based version called the STG2000 while NVIDIA would market the NV1 video RAM version for higher-end PC applications.

The two companies also co-developed the digital-to-analog (DAC) converter found on the board.

The DRAM version by SGS Thomson's STG2000, was available in 1MB upgradable to 2MB (the Diamond Edge 3D 2120XL) or 2MB standard (the Diamond Edge 3D 2200XL.) The VRAM configuration, based on NVIDIA's NV1, was available for PCI in 2MB upgradable to 4MB (the Diamond Edge 3D 3240XL) or 4MB standard (the Diamond Edge 3D 3400XL.) Both chips were based on NVIDIA's NV1 technology.

The Diamond Edge was the most well known product, and by far the most popular, although there were a number of other manufacturers (seen below) that announced products based on the NV1/STG2000 with small differences.

NV1 :

Genoa Stratos 3D
Jazz Multimedia 3D Magic

STG2000 :

Leadtek WinFast Proview 3D GD400 & GD500
Yuan JRS-3DS100

NVIDIA and STS-Thomson weren't competitive since they served different price points. NVIDIA would focus on performance and enabling more features and SGS would focus on serving the commodity market.

Late 1995, many software companies announced products, such as Electronic Arts, Activision, Sega, Crystal Dynamics, Papyrus, Domark, Alexandria, Martin Hash, Inc., and Sonic Foundry.

There was one platform which shared the NV1’s use of Quadratic rendering technology - the Sega Saturn - which created an alliance between Sega and NVIDIA resulting in Saturn games like Nascar Racing, Virtua Fighter and Virtua Cop being ported to PC to take advantage of the NV1 and its unique method of 3D processing, being bundled with the card at the time of sale.

Even the well known Mechwarrior II was supposed to be ported to the NV1. NVIDIA assigned one engineer to them, but the whole project was dropped since it was too big of a task to be done by one engineer. The NV1 version was actually the first 3D-accelerated Mech II version to start production, but was never completed. All of the builds NVIDIA provided them with were archived, documented and put into storage somewhere at Activision. (think big warehouse like at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.)

What went wrong with the NV1 and how did it almost kill NVIDIA?

The proprietary quadratic texture mapping of the NV1 was its death sentence. When Microsoft finalized Direct3D not too long after the NV1 had reached store shelves, polygons had been chosen as the standard primitive, and despite NVIDIA's and Diamond's best efforts, developers were no longer willing to develop for the NV1.

Nvidia did manage to put together limited Direct3D support, but it was slow and buggy (software-based), and no match for the native polygon hardware on the market.

Other factors like questionable audio, overall cost to NVIDIA and the consumer, slow 2D speed and the failure of the Sega Saturn vs the Playstation all contributed towards its demise. But nothing doomed the NV1 more than the release of Direct3D.

With Direct3D, Microsoft nearly killed NVIDIA. PC OEMs refused to produce boards with a non-Direct3D compliant chip, software development was dropped, and NVIDIA's engineers knew they could not come up with a completely new polygonal 3D accelerator and bring it to market in time. The company retreated from the public interest and was forced to lay off several employees.

Subsequent NV1 quadratic-related development continued internally as the NV2, which was all ill-fated console chip, partially because of the same quadratic problems that arose, which was regarded as a nightmare to work with.

SGS-Thomson STG2000 Dram version of the NV1.

This card is the Diamond Edge 2120, which got the standard 2Mb, which could be upgraded to 4Mb.


This particular model has got all the ram slots filled, which corresponds to 4Mb of Dram, if this card would have had 4Mb from the factory, it would have been labeled as the Diamond Edge 2200.

You can clearly see from the second picture the Sega Saturn ports and cables, CD Audio-in cables (different cables for different CD-Rom manufacturers, audio out cable, and the RJ-45 to 15 pin IBM Game port.


The RJ-45 port on the board leads many people to assume incorrectly, that the card must be a network controller as well, but from the adaptor cable you can clearly see what the real purpose of that port was.

For more info on the NV1, please read the section above.

Videoforte's version of the NV1.

Looking at the PCB layout, one can easily see that this board greatly differs from the Diamond Edge 3D models.

The External Audio In and Microphone ports have been done away with, leaving space to feature a full 15 pin IBM Game port, instead of the RJ-45 port on the Diamond Edge 3D which required the adaptor cable.

Other differences are the amount of DRAM on the board, this board has got 4 chips, but instead of them being 1Mb each, like on the STG-Thomson board above, each DRAM module is 512KB. Hence if all slots would be filled, the total amount of DRAM installed would still be 4Mb, just like the Diamond Edge 3D 2200.

The board came in -01 and -02 designations, but seems to refer to the revision instead of being factory 4Mb or 2Mb. (more sources needed)

Announced in August 1995, the Imagine II was Number Nine’s second iteration of the Imagine 128 board, based on enhancements to the Imagine 128 architecture.

The Board came in DRAM and VRAM configurations (4MB and 8MB), which enabled them to pitch the cards at more price points to a broader range of users. Because the competition had heated up, with cheaper competitive products being released in 1996, a cut down version of the Imagine II was launched at $399 called the “2e”, instead of the $699 of the Imagine II.

The second generation Imagine 128 chip was designed to provide faster performance and new graphics capabilities, including OpenGL and DirectX 3D acceleration, as well as colour space conversion and interpolated stretch BLT to allow improved quality video playback.

The series 2 incorporated Number Nine’s WideBUS (TM) technology, a graphics architecture that utilized 128-bit 2D & 3D drawing engines, and 128-bit wide internal and external data pipelines and had the world's only 256-bit video engine and front-end colour space converter to provide unmatched MPEG playback performance. Video could be scaled up to 1600 x 1200 at 16.8 million colours, without the blockiness normally associated with scaled video. No special MPEG hardware was required.

It also featured what Number Nine called an Intelligent Command Processor; this on-board engine effectively enabled parallel processing by autonomously calculating a long series of graphics instructions while freeing up the CPU to execute further application level instructions.

The Imagine 2’s DAC ran at 250 MHz and was capable of 2D resolutions up to 1920 by 1200 with 65k colours at a 77 Hz refresh rate, or 1920 by 1080 with 16m colours at a refresh rate of 83 Hz, thus allowing the board to support high resolution monitors in true colour modes at high refresh rates.

In terms of hardware 3D acceleration, the maximum setting the 8 MB board could handle was a resolution of 1152 by 864 at 65k colours.

The Series 2 supported Microsoft’s mini-client driver (MCD) standard for accelerating 3D (OpenGL calls) under NT 4.0. With MCD the OpenGL portion of a video driver operates alongside the NT 4.0 display driver thereby enhancing the link to 3D hardware.

The main problem of the card was that the Imagine 2 chip did not support texture mapping and the requirement for Direct3D was texturing.

Number Nine’s director of communications Phil Parker was asked what would happen if a chip company went one way and Microsoft went another:

"This happened to us. Our Imagine 2 chip didn't have texturing, and the requirement for Direct3D was texturing. We said 'Oh, my god,' but by that time, we couldn't compete with the likes of S3 or NVIDIA."

Number Nine bundled quite a lot of software with the Series 2 card, worth hundreds of dollars, to help users exploit the full capabilities of the Series 2. The bundle included (funnily enough) Interactual's STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT VideoSaver, which turned your screen saver into a full-screen, high-quality MPEG movie, with 20-minutes of the most popular scenes from STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT.

For Windows 95 and 3.1, Number Nine also provided an extra control panel software utility called HawkEye that provided on-screen control of display qualities, including the ability to have a virtually expanded screen (up to 2016 by 2016) that automatically scrolls when the cursor encounters the edge of the screen.

Number Nine won a number of awards with the Imagine 2 like the Windows Magazine Award for Imagine 128 Series 2 "Win100 Product Award for Best Graphics Accelerator."

The magazine called the Imagine 128 Series 2 "one of the fastest graphics accelerators on the market, offering the best video playback of any board." It also made the Windows Magazine Highest Recommended List more times than any other graphics accelerator during the past year.

Number Nine scored some major OEM wins, with NEC using the 4Mb card in their PowerMate Professional PC. SAG/ECE Electronics used the 8Mb Vram board in their STA Dual Pro, STA Quad Pro, and STA Alpha Station high end workstations, even pre-selling them before the cards were ready.

Other OEMs were Micron Electronics with their Powerdigm workstation, and the Series 2 was even used in Tech-Source Inc.’s systems, which featured ultra-high resolution graphics adapters that were utilized nationwide in the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) new Air Traffic Control System known as STARS (Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System).

Number nine and Tech-Source Inc. were contracted by Raytheon who was a prime contractor in the government's STARS air traffic control upgrade.

The Number Nine Imagine 128 Series 2 co-processor powered Raptor 2K was used to upgrade existing radar screens managing air traffic safety on special monitors that ran at a screen resolution of 2,048 by 2,048. Using three separate display planes, the graphics sub-systems simultaneously viewed radar image data of maps and weather, while concurrently manipulating more than 2,000 flight tracks. And all that was in 1997!! Indeed a major contract win for Number Nine.