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What's new... is old again
October to December 1999 News

December 1999 News

  • Dec 13, 1999
  • Linuxmania has struck....it is a case of good/great design becoming more mainstream via frontends and applications which are targeted towards PC Users instead of sophisticated computer users. The flexibility of Linux to scale with the user as he becomes more sophisticated is a case of one design with variable size changing to fit all. The day scanner manufacturers and digital camera manufacturers start bundling Linux drivers with their products will signal a breakthrough for Linux and the consumer.
  • ATI has recaptured its place in ever popular XPS series from DELL computers with the "Rage 128 Pro" containing the a very good combination of real world 3D performance (not too much/not too little) along with flat panel TMDS support In addition, the support of high quality (3rd generation) video input and TV output is possible via a low cost companion chip called the Rage Theatre. Read about it here Present day sales volume indicate that this may be the killer chip in terms of price/+performance/cost for the modern desktop. Find it at your Apple dealer in the latest re-incarnation of the Apple G4 computers. Universal support of either AGP 2x motherboards or AGP4x boards (1.5V) in one video card along with industry standard texture compression DXTC. Linux support and installs can now be found at the following two OEM sites
    1. IBM and Linux
    2. DELL and Linux
    3. VA Linux The system integrators whose IPO went from $30 to $300 in one day.
  • The capability to deliver high quality television in the form of HDTV was officially announced in the form of two chips from ATI called....what else... Rage HDTV. Click on the following links for more info: link one, link two, and link three,

  • Dec 2, 1999
    Just a couples of items to be added over the weekend:

    November 1999 News
  • Nov 26, 1999 GLX is the name of the Linux project that will bring 3D support into Linux. John Carmack is part of the steering deciding which features on what hardware GLX will be prototyped on first. Here are a couple of links to some of the important milestones achieved in just a month since the Mach64 driver and Rage 128 drivers were released. Due to the long standing support of the 2D interface and the community of developers familiar with the Mach64 architecture, it was decided to support the existing community of 40 million+ Rage Pro chipsets first and to then support the advanced features of the Rage 128 later.
  • Nov 24, 1999
    There is a movement towards 10 bit DAC's even though the human eye cannot percieve some of the differences in the signal in a 6 bit space in the best case of green. The inefficiency is explained by the requirements of composite TV in supporting the blanking horozontal/vertical retrace signals embedded in either a NTSC/PAL signal. This signal occupies about 28% of the swing. Even S-Video has this inefficiency but the colour information is stored on a seperate channel from the luma resulting in less crosstalk. HDTV has adopted a new method called YPrPb which is very similar to RGB but in much less bandwidth. The new standard has the most of the luminance information (brightness) coded into the Y (Yellow) channel with a maximum swing of 1.0V. The Pr channel does not duplicate the luminance information by sending the difference signal between R and Y. Likewise for for Pb which subtracts Y from B. The end result is a resolution increase for HDTV illustrated by the difference in sharpness between text on TV and text on an RGB monitor....there is no comparison. ATI's traditional strength in mutimedia, DVD decode and RBG converters give it core competancies in becoming a player in commercializing HDTV which was originally developed by Japan in the late 80's. The U.S goveerment has made requirements on that original standard/test trial to be backward compatable with existing NTSC/PAL transmissions in the early 90's in an attempt to rally the American consumer's electronic industry around what the called America's last chance at the consumer product. Computers were uncommon then. Sarnoff was then a prime driver of HDTV development but the convergence of graphics/television/storage has made certain graphics chip companies capable of developing muiltiple chips/year prime players in this field. As shown over the last year, ATI has kepts it hand in the traditional 2D and 3D chips but is focussing a percentage of its profits on research by diversifying into MPEG, DVD, and complex set-top boxes. These boxes are equivalent to low cost computers merging communications receivers and graphics into one. The Rage Theatre chip in this box replaces video encode, video decode, video input/output filtering, frame-locked PLLs, 10 bit ADC and 10 bit DAC which might nomrally comprise at least three integrated chips. Are there more goodies in store ? If you look at the start of HDTV broadcast back in November 1998 and ATI's delivery of prototypes of Rage 128 in August 1998 (supporting HDTV), then you might understand how well synced up ATI's development plans are with industry developments. In Iran, the penalty would be the loss of my tongue :)....later.

  • Nov 23, 1999
    The joys and perils of using Linux are none more evident than when you embrace the leading edge of technology. If the internet is your lifeline to information and link is down...how do you find information on hooking back up ? Visit your local friend who is still attached is one avenue but here I am today editing this page again. My ISP server switched over to a CISCO router recently and the fun began....new password procedures...new authentication procedures....new scripts. I was using a SLIP connection for a while but the combination of a noisy phone line and lack of error correction made it impossible to download and upload a 40K page of HTML code reliably.

  • In an increasingly segmented market that continues to grow in all segments of the cost categorty, high-end and multimedia, ATI's net sales and income increased by about 50% in 1999 to 1.23 billion dollars. In Canada, the start of the Winter season is a refreshing part of the year where ATI tradtionally has its head buried deep in the R&D sand. While most companies today in the graphics market can focus on 3D acceleration as a differentiatior, ATI has brought out 5 different chps this year that are really ahead of their time in the form of the XL/XC(low cost TMDS), Theatre(the best camcorder input conversion in the industry and high resolution TV-out), Rage 128 4x (Rage 128 with AGP 4x), Rage 128 Pro (Performance Rage 128 with integrated TMDS for the emerging flatpanel Desktop performance category), Mobility (integrated memory, DVD and the advanced power management that runs Linux). COMDEX this year will highlight some of ATI's products focus on FCC's thrust to have all television stations fully support digital HDTV broadcast by 2006. The first Direct Broadcast HDTV transmission sere in November 98 This format has equivalent resolution to that of a 35mm slide projected on to a screen. HDTV necessitates an architectural decision to support it via high bandwidth DVS port and a 1440 wide overlay (vs 800) and this is supported on the Rage 128. HDTV has been around for the last decade but North American standardization deviated from the proposal initiated in Japan for legacy issues and to buy development time for U.S. The limited bandwidth of a TV signal tends to give people tunnel vision. A HDTV image has so much detail in it, that fade out shots of crowds moving at large gatherings, such as Woodstock or the Indy 500, have an interesting effect...It is easy to follow Waldo. On news broadcasts, the background technichians, camera men, and studio monitors make for interesting viewing. Look for ATI's second generation HDTV technology at COMDEX formed parlty out of an alliance with General Instrument development of high quality graphics chip capable of supporting studio quality TV.
    October 1999 News

  • October 24, 1999,
    Brrr....its getting colder. Toronto blooms full of colour within a long Autumn season due to the moderating effects of Lake Ontario. A few good hikes worth taking are the Tom Thomsom trail established in 1994 gives you a glimmer of the beauty found in a mature forest. Book some time to peruse this jewel in the heart of the city and to get a feel for the beauty of this region prior to settlement.

  • ATI announced more formal support of 3D and Video via release of programming specifications to the Linux community. John Carmack's stand of supporting Open architectures, in particular OpenGL, has had a significant impact in both the hardware and software development community in terms of freedom of choice. The release of details under "non disclosure" of the hardware provide both the development of drivers and applications and have in the past allowed innovative products to be supported under operating systems from Apple, CP/M, DOS, Win3.1, Win95, WinNT and Linux. The open disclosure will enable developement by individuals working out of their homes. It should prove to be an interesting time.

  • In the assembly line process of putting up a 3D frame of information, the bottleneck has been the pixel rendering last stages. As resolution increases linearly, the amount of infromation goes up by roughly the square of the pixel resolution. The CPU has proven to be a very good "worker" in the early stages of the assembly line for operations called "transformation and lighting". Before the advent of 3D, the CPU worked the whole line (Trasformation, Lighting and Rendering) using a busy little mathematical calculator called the floating point unit. What distinguished Intel from AMD and Cyrix was the efficiency of this high speed calculator. Freeing, the FPU the burdensome task of "rendering" which allowed the it to focus solely on the T and L operations. If the T and L operation is now done by dedicated hardware instead of the FPU, the question is which is faster ? Note that "all" tasks scale by the resolution. One of the recent techniques to gauge the "T and L stage to FPU advantage" is to minimize the backend rendering task by running in low resolutions like 320x160, 480x320 and 640x480. The theory goes something like this: "If the stage is faster at low resolutions, then it will be faster at high resolutions".... beware! Architecturally, many systems in the world are adequately specified and designed for fixed bandwidth. This includes broadcast, film and television. If the resolution requirements vere abitrarily doubled on the fly, then certain unforseen bottlenecks would arise. Producing a 1024x768 images with adequate framerate (30 fps ?...some say less) seems to be a reasonable modern day game objective when weighted against the other problems in this vast world, it seems that hardware review community is obsessed with ever increasing resolutions (1280 or 1600 anyone ?). The basis for what resolution is required for HDTV was specified on the basis of distance to screen (10 ft) , % field of vision (60 degrees) , along with the requirement to equal 35mm film quality. The problem with today's review standards is the arbtrariness or syntheticness of the required standard. MPEG decoding has largely been a non issue in the computer arena due to the efficacy of software decoders running off the FPU (remember the AVI days when music videos were distributed with music under Quicktime players bundled with CD music), and yet, it is a function that should be put in hardware prior to T and L. The reality is that MPEG decode and 3D gaming are not operations that one is likely to run together or while running a Word processor or spreadsheet. So offloading the CPU/FPU by incorporating T and L into hardware today may not by a huge advantage and may in fact limit the speedup than can be realized by a faster CPU....then again, I'm not one to really talk as my Pentium 233 MMX motherboard is looking forward to compiling a new generation of Linux software, Pearl scripts, and expanding the ethernet network to centralized home control and burgular alarm functions. The future so bright...I just hope we d'ont get caught turning off our minds and instead keep an eye glued to a framerate counter. Make it work and if you need to make it better/fast(er)....famous words from a software developer.
  • October 7, 1999
    Remember what 1/2 of Microsoft was working on prior to the Internet wave hitting everyone in 1996...Multimedia. DVD is the new media that integrates video and audio into one play unit with new features DVD has been a resounding success already for the consumer electronics industry. There have been over 1 million hardware units sold to date and over 25 million of the discs themselves. There has been a tremendous number of requests for informative links on DVD and using computers/grahic cards as playback mechanisms. Here are the links, enjoy.
    1. 3D Gaming DVD Primer
    2. Full On's DVD graphic card comparison
    3. ATI's Software DVD player
    4. DVD's Future
    5. PC DVD Page

  • In a recent roundup of personal workstations for home and business, ATI technology was found in 9/15 computers. The editor's choice was the Atlantic E400 bundled with a DVD drive using Rage 128 technology. In fact, 4/15 systems reviewed were using Rage 128 technology. DVD has so much capacity that 9 different viewpoints of an event can be selected on the fly during playback. This makes for interesting concepts for education whereby text, graphics, animation (multimedia anyone ?) can be embedded into the alternate channels. For now, the information has been used for "director cut's" of long movies and for alternate camera angles/isolation shots/viewpoints of drummers, bass players, etc on music videos. ATI's highly acclaimed "Theatre Technology" has the best visual quality and processing efficiency in recent reviews of the Rage 128 Pro cards.
    1. Gamer's Depot Rage Fury/128 Pro review
    2. Anand's Fury Pro review ...falling into the traps of adults but a good overview and a bit too game centric...he is still young...beware the power of the dark side, Luc.
    3. Sharky's extreme a very good overview with the best balance of emphasis
    4. Tom's review ....conclusions first...a not too shabby rating from a "hard core" gamer ? It looks like the editorializing effects/additon of Silvino Orozco have been paying dividends. I hope I see the last of phrases like "real deal", "performance hungry 3-D gamers", and "secret",

  • I have one question to ask: "What exactly is a hardcore gamer ?" It is a loosely used and much abused term that is overused (my opinion) just as rock climbing and extreme sports have been overpromoted over the last decade basically because it makes for good copy. A quick show of hands up those rock climbers who have ambled about escarpments and trails prior to tacking a climbing wall, first. You be surprised at the number of hands going up. It is like trying to run before you have learnt to walk or crawl....it can be done but the pleasure derived from a child walking is due to the months of crawling about. The reality is that the hard core gaming "purchasing" community is not that large when compared to the segment that wants all around performance and features. In a economy of supply and demand, artificial demand can be induced by constant whining about performance....even when performance is sufficient. The silver lining is price. It is similar to going to a car dealership to purchase a economy car and asking the salesperson to show you the top of the line touring sedan. Sure it is faster, smoother, and has more bell and whistles but the purchaser will put up the song and dance of wanting all the features of the more expensive car despite the practical advantages of the less expensive car (better gas mileage, better manouverability, cheaper maintenance of non ABS brakes) in search of better price. We all play this game to some extent but it has developed into a full blown neurosis/constant obsolescence/user insecurity soap opera. Remember the commercial video capture systems 5 years ago may have cost several thousands of dollars. Today the technology on a Rage Fury Pro card can be had for about $150 along with a flat panel TMDS interface, DVD playback, 3D gaming, 2D acceleration, and TV-out. Where would Steven Spielberg be today if he had this sort of technology access ?

    There was a statement made recently in a review whereby the reviewer stated:

    Yes, "eventually" people will float to heaven, too. The reality today is that existing Rage 128 chips (prior Rage 128 Pro) are in high and increasing demand. This demand is real and coming from the "people who purchase OEM products". The Rage IIC sells very well into Linux based systems in the University environment. The portable market has exploded and the only accelerated 3D that can be found there are in ATI chips. So when a review says the "people", what exactly does it mean ? If the author is trying to say "I think people should prefer and want more extreme 3D performance acceleration in hardware ,like me, cuz there will always be a poorly written, orverachieving game or 2048x2048 game settings that failed to design for mainstream hardware limitations...insecurity will of course rule"

    Take a look at Companies that catered to the extreme 3D (Metabyte, Quantum, and now Hercules) have folded shop (do not make money) and are figuring out what to do next. They have found the people will read the preachings of "hard core whiners" but not buy at the premium pricing. Given that all things are equal (features, performance, price and support), better 3D will sell but the reality is that using the latest high performance prototype memories (low manufacturing volumes) exerts both a financial cost and a realibility concern (less timing margin). The ATI solution of using dual processors allows for existing memories to be used realiably while improving upon performances aspects for those who are so incline to hunger for more. ATI is here today with the Rage Fury MAXX as both a technology demonstration and a real product. Myself, I take the Rage Fury Pro and put up with the more than adequate frame rates that well exceed those of the game designers that targeted volume baseline systems (such as the Rage Pro/Riva from the last generation) . If you want to run DVD, then one option with 3Dfx/TNT/TNT2 is to buy a higher powered CPU like a Pentium II 350. If want to edit footage from you camcorder for a song, then the Rage Fury Pro is probably the only solution on the market right now that will also give you a major 3D boost and leave you with enough CPU to do regular processing. If you want to output to television (think slide presentations), then the latest generation TV-out enocde path found on the Rage Theatre companion chip will be highly appreciated

    There is a very fat segment of the computer market that truly uses the computer as a versatile appliance (gaming machine, fax machine, word processor, TV, VCR, Video editing station, educational robots, CD player, virtual magazine, photography book, mail, photo darkroom, burgular alarm, etc). Toshiba has developed a new paradigm called the compact desktop which is using laptop technology to generate footprint efficient computers with the same power but lower cost and heat. The promise/success of DVD technology is part of the promised of undiminshed power/versatility in a smaller footprint. DVD decoding hardware found in Rage 128 chipsets is the key to these DynaTop Desktops using lower powered CPUs so that Pentium III technology is not necessary. Pentium MMX and Pentium II 266 or Celeron processors are more than sufficient. Given the amount of television that is consumed and generated by camcorders, it is no wonder that huge interest will be generated in a product that can take output of a camcorder and store it on a computer for editing purposes and then spit it back out for viewing. The combination of huge hard disk drives, ATI DVD technology and high quality playback now make Video editing a reality. Weddings anybody ?

  • October 1, 1999
    Nothing quite like a walk in woods to cool the savage beast bought on from the life's daily battles to earn a living. The niagra escarpement runs from Niagara Falls to Tobemory along a route called the Bruce Trail . The remenants of rocks dot the top of the escarpment where waters once ran fast and furious in the form of underground caves and crevices. Imagine a "rock" tunnel some 20 ft long carved out by just water. Soothe the soul and clear the mind by visiting Bruce.

  • It is one thing to be pronounced channel champion by the vendors who serve the market by selling either complete systems or assembling them from components. ATI has once again garnered the title of Channel Champion for overall product quality and delivery of graphics subsystems. ATI has also had a major impact on the success of companies such as HP(Desitop and Notebook ) and SUN (workstation) by virture of their Vectra, Omnibook and UltraSpars products.

  • "Yes Virginia there is a Aurora Bourelis" or more commonly known as the Northern Lights. The extreme 3D performance category is a niche category constantly undergoing redefinition and constant examination. It may not be practical either from a cost or technology point of view but implementation of products will have a trickle down effect into next generation products when the technology becomes appropriate from a yield and cost perspective. All that I can say is that ATI will have a new product in this category. Is it as fast growing or as large as the exploding Notebook market ? Hard to say.

    Most of the high performance motherboards today can be purchased for about $100 to $150. Next to the CPU, the level of overall performance can be affected most by the graphics board choice . Just as AGP took time to take root in the motherboards, system software/drivers and game development, Transformation and Lighting will probably have a similar development cycle stetching well into next year as developers weigh out whether highly taxing algorithims just might kill sales due to inability to run on common graphics hardware platform.

    The polar of view of using of software engines for both rasterization and T/L processing only has been a good thing for CPU sales I still run Quake 2 (software engine) on Linux today and am amzed at the code efficiency and the power of a Pentium 233 MMX class processor. It does the job for game play albeit at lower resolution and detail. It beats using night vision goggles and Dungeons and Dragons. When it comes down to today's demanding games, hardware assist is a must with games such as Quake 3 and UnReal, expect to see the next ATI project code name Aurora to be something special....I am sworn to secrecy or else I may never see another Northern Light :)

  • The "Rage Theatre" chip is similar to the Impact and Impact-2 TV-out chip used on previous generation Third generation filtering algorithims provide the necessary quality to provide for improved signals coming from HDTV and DVD sources. In addition it has capabilities to directly decode a television signal and generate a digital TV datastream that can be process digitally with far more precision and accuracy that any analog system. When combined with a TV-tuner (VCR or ATI's TV tuner), think of the chip as providing a second television in a pinch. In addition, it can provide a digital audio SPDIF signal. There is no other product in the market with similar attributes. Expect to see it everywhere in a product near you. It will be provide a base component of a add in card that will alllow for DVD decode, TV-out, and TV-in called the ATI TV Wonder that can work with any graphics card. As Carl Sagan said "imagine billions upon billions".