Informatika és tudomány

  • mainruler
    #59
    Talán ez majd tisztáz néhány dolgot:

    S3 Graphics Interview
    January 17, 2003




    With a lot of buzz and many questions out there about DeltaChrome, I posed some questions to S3 Graphic's Young Kwon, who was glad to answer them.



    Savage2k: Your recent announcement of DeltaChrome marks the first time that the new joint venture has entered back into the competitive graphics market. Is S3 Graphic's aim to compete with the larger firms or to find its own niche market?

    Young: To clarify, the DC is the first time that the JC will try out the desktop market. As you know we have been holding our own in Mobile and actually we have carefully built a reputation for high quality mobile graphics processors in the top tier notebook OEM market. As for the desktop market reentry, we definitely intend to compete with the big boys since the backing of VIA makes us a formidable contender. You may know that Ati is having trouble making profit and Nvidia is having to pay a very large staff in Silicon Valley with their respective large paychecks. S3G is now spreadout globally and a lot of our intensive work (not the design) is done overseas. So as far as business is concerned, we should be more than competitive. Of course we intend to give the customers unique features such as HDTV integration on top of high performance GFX, you may call this niche but my guess is that it will become mainstream.

    Savage2k: Would you say DeltaChrome will compete with current/upcoming DX9 products in terms of price and/or performance? Will time of release be a factor?

    Young: For Mobile, we will be the only DX9 8-pipe solution. The competitors' parts will be 4-pipe. We will definitely have the edge in 3D performance and we intend to be cost competitive. For desktop, the answer is that we will be performance competitive but our inherent smaller die size will give us the cost advantage. Our timing is a bit later than the others in the desktop area, but our Asian channels through VIA will give us the upper hand in marketing the product.

    Savage2k: Will S3 Graphics/VIA be retailing boards with DeltaChrome yourselves, or have any board vendors expressed interest in the chip?

    Young: At present we don't intend to retail our selves since there are existing board partners that we are working with and the arrangements seem to be working well. Many board vendors have expressed interest in the DC product after our announcement. Some surprising! It seems that Nvidia has not been treating their board 'partners' well and what goes around comes around....

    Savage2k: There has been some confusion over what the final clock/memory core speeds will be. Can you give us a target speed?

    Young: All I can say now about this is that the middle clock/core speeds will be 300/300. I'll definately keep you posted.

    Savage2k: S3 Graphics/VIA hold a substantial chunk of the notebook/mobile market, and we really have never found desktop-quality graphics on laptops. Do you believe DeltaChrome can deliver that and do you see any competition for DeltaChrome in that area?

    Young: The mobile market is far more rigourous than most people realize. You can always stuff a bigger engine in a desktop chip and get away with that. In mobile, you gotta get more performance with less power and higher reliability AND better support. Software support and bug turnaround for top tier mobile customers will make even the workaholic cringe. So naturally, the pace of development for mobile 3D performance has always followed. With the DC, we intend to change that. The DC was actually designed for mobile from the beginning. It is not a cut down version of a desktop chip. It has fantastic advances in power savings that a desktop chip could never achieve. I'll delince from mentioning details since we intend to patent some of these features. I'll tell you that our goal of idle power, which is the most important metric for mobile GFX, is less than 0.5W. This is an incredible feat that we managed in our previous generation part. In contrast our competitors cut down desktop parts are double or even triple that figure. Bottom line, in mobile DC will give you everything! Including 3D performance to rival the latest desktop DX9 chips.

    Savage2k: What kind of power consumption can we expect from the mobile versions of the core?

    Young: Our figures are 3.5W peak and 0.5W idle. Check out the competition numbers.

    Savage2k: What is the transistor count of the core?

    Young: This is confidential but we are significantly less than the Ati 9700 pro and NV30.

    Savage2k: Other companies have tried their hand at various z-occulling techniques, how does S3's Advanced Deferred Rendering differ, and what kind of performance can be expected of it?

    Young: We not only have front to back culling, we have back to front culling! Because we delay render, smart decisions can be made before actually rendering objects. Also, we have course-Z (hieretical-Z), and other techniques to improve the overall efficiency. I don't know how to specify what the performance of our techniques will be at this moment. Let me get back to you after I confer with my 3D guy.

    Savage2k: DeltaChrome has many new video features, such as per-pixel deinterlacing and HDTV output. VIA has recently become very aggressive in persuing set-top box and multimedia solutions. Are there any plans for integrated versions of DeltaChrome in VIA boards?

    Young: Yes.

    Savage2k: AlphaChrome/SavageXP was announced a while back, but we have heard little about the core since. Are there going to be any announcements for products using that core?

    Young: Not really, we have decided to concentrate on the DC sometime ago. For example, the press releases that I write take a lot of time and energy and I just don't have the bandwidth!

    Savage2k: With the S3/VIA joint venture underway, what changes should we expect in terms of direction will S3 take in the future?

    Young: You will see much better support than in the past. For example we have increased our software staff 200% overseas to support customers in recent months. VIA is a big, profitable company. With their backing many things become possible that is not possible for some smaller guys.

    Savage2k: One major complaint in the past was driver support. How will the new unified driver set help out in that regard and has VIA helped out in this area?

    Young: As I stated, I think you will be pleased at the support from our new organization. Of course unified drivers mean that we can concentrate our efforts and simplifiy the code. You probably don't know this but in the mobile world we are known for our software quality. Yes, I know there are lingering complaints about S2K drivers, this is when S3 was exiting the desktop market. It makes sense. For mobile we are the best. This is why customers like IBM and Toshiba choose us. Moving foreward, we intend to give desktop the same level of quality. Give us a chance.

    Savage2k: Thank you very much for your time, and we hope to hear more from you in the future.



    Ty Butler

    Editor-in-Chief


    Na, tehát ezek szerint biztos lesz belőle kártya. Ez már egy jó pont.
    A másik dolog, ami feltűnt, az az a dolog, amiről lentebb írtam (a cikket csak tegnap olvastam, tehát nincs összefüggés!): Technikai fejlődés! Ha mindaz, amit Young állít igaz, akkor végre valaki kitörni látszik a "fejlesszünk kártyát úgy, hogy belepumpálunk még x millió tranzisztort, oszt' megtoldjuk egy tápkábellel" irányvonalból, és mérnöki munkával, technológiával akar elérni teljesítménynövekedést, nem a most divatos módszerrel.
    \"The problem of leadership is inevitably: Who will play God?\"