S3 Graphics

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S3 Graphics

Type	Public
Founded	January 1989
Headquarters
Key people	Dado Banatao and Ronald Yara
Industry	Computing
Products	Graphics cards
Website	www.s3graphics.com

S3 Graphics, Ltd designs graphics chipsets for PCs.

1 History
2 Products
3 Graphics controllers
4 Market Trends
5 SONICblue
6 External links

[edit] History

S3 was founded and incorporated in January 1989 by Dado Banatao and Ronald Yara. On March 5, 1993, S3 began an Initial Public Offering of 2,000,000 shares of common stock on Nasdaq. After several profitable years as an independent startup company, struggling with the transition to integrated 3D cards, S3 remodeled itself as a consumer electronics company and sold off its core graphics division to a joint venture with VIA Technologies for $323 million. The joint venture, S3 Graphics, continues to develop and market chipsets based on the S3 graphics technology.

The reformed company carried over a substantial cash pile from the profitable TRIO days and a successful investment in UMC, a Taiwanese semiconductor foundry. On November 15, 2000, S3 changed its name to SONICblue and its Nasdaq stock symbol to SBLU. The new business model focused on digital media and information appliance opportunities. ReplayTV, Rio, and GoVideo were some of the brands developed. On March 21, 2003 SONICblue filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

[edit] Products

S3 produced graphics cards primarily for PCs. While the earlier products such as the TRIO range were 2D only, later 3D functionality was added with the ViRGE and then Savage cards. More recently S3 chipsets have been sold as integrated VIA north bridge parts.

[edit] Graphics controllers

S3 911, 911A (1990) - S3's first Windows accelerators (16/256-color, high-color acceleration)
S3 924 - 24-bit True-color acceleration
S3 801, 805, 805i - mainstream DRAM VESA Windows accelerators (16/256-color, high-color acceleration)
S3 928 - 24/32-bit true-color acceleration, DRAM or VRAM
S3 805p, 928p - S3's first PCI support
S3 Vision864, Vision964 (1994) - 2nd generation Windows accelerators (64-bit wide framebuffer)
S3 Vision868, Vision968 - S3's first motion video accelerator (zoom and YUV->RGB conversion)
S3 Trio 32, 64, 64V+, 64V2 (1995) - S3's first integrated (RAMDAC+VGA) accelerator. The 64 bit versions were S3's most successful product range.
ViRGE (no suffix), VX, DX, GX, GX2, VX, Trio3D - S3's first Windows 3D-accelerators. Notoriously poor 3D. Sold well to OEMs mainly because of low price and solid 2D-performance.
Savage 3D (1998), 4 (1999), 2000 (2000)- S3's first recognizably modern 3D hardware implementation. Poor yields meant actual clock speeds were 30% below expectations, and buggy drivers caused further problems. S3 Texture Compression went on to become an industry standard, and the Savage3D's DVD acceleration was market leading at introduction. Savage2000 was announced as the first chip with integrated Transformation and Lighting (S3TL) co-processor.
Aurora64V+, S3 ViRGE/MX, SuperSavage, SavageXP - Mobile chipsets
ProSavage, Twister, UniChrome - Integrated implementations of Savage chipset for VIA motherboards
GammaChrome, DeltaChrome, Chrome 20 series - Discrete cards post acquisition by VIA.

The Chrome S27 of the Chrome 20 series; S3's current flagship card
S3 GenDAC, SDAC - VGA RAMDAC with high/true-color bypass (SDAC had integrated PLLs, dot-clocks, and hardware Windows cursor)

Media chipsets

Sonic/AD sound chipset - A programmable, sigma-delta audio DAC, featuring an integrated PLL, stereo 16-bit analogue output
SonicVibes - PCI Audio Accelerator
Scenic/MX2 - MPEG Decoder

[edit] Market Trends

From formation in 1989 it took S3 two years to develop the world's first single-chip Graphical User Interface (GUI) accelerator. Integrated functionality enabled attractive pricing, and solid features for competitive prices remained a hallmark of S3's strategy.

S3's most notable product range is the S3 TRIO 2D chipset. It remains one of the best selling graphics chipsets of all time. Updated in a number of timely revisions, each time S3 managed to keep the series one step ahead of the competition.

However, TRIO was a 2D range, and by the mid 1990s consumers and OEMs started to demand 3D functionality from graphics cards. Internally, S3 failed to recognise this transition quickly enough, and had to rush out the S3 ViRGE range of 3D cards. While cheap, and popular with some OEMs for this reason, performance and drivers were poor. Some enthusiasts even nicknamed them graphics decelerators.

The integrated modern style 3D feature produced by S3, was the Savage series of graphics cards. Notably these pioneered S3TC under the proprietary METAL API interface, subsequently adopted by Microsoft under royalty, as an industry standard for texture compression in DirectX.

Savage also introduced an industry-leading motion compensation engine, a quality video scaler, as well as hardware alpha-blended sub-picture blending, a first. However, the 3D performance of the Savage cards was never quite enough to take significant market share. Poor yields meant actual clock speeds were 30% lower than had been projected during development, and the transform and lighting engine implementation was flawed.

It became apparent the excellence of S3's integrated 2D technology, was no longer enough to ensure the overall success of the chipset. While S3 could have continued development of the Savage cards, and most likely resolved the outstanding issues, instead in 2001 the S3 management decided to sell off the core business to VIA for $323 million.

Subsequently, Savage derived chips turned up in numerous VIA motherboard chipsets as an integrated north bridge solution, such as Twister and UniChrome. More recent discrete derivations have carried the brand names DeltaChrome and GammaChrome. In this manner, S3 derived chips have held onto about a 10% share of the overall PC graphics market.

[edit] SONICblue

SONICblue was an American consumer electronics company resulting from the 1999 merger between computer peripheral maker Diamond Multimedia and graphics chipset maker S3 Incorporated.

In November 2000, the combined company changed its name to SONICblue and changed its focus from graphics chipsets and computer peripherals to consumer electronics, such as the Rio line of MP3 players. In January 2001, the graphics chipset business was sold to a joint venture between SONICblue and VIA called S3 Graphics. Later that same year, the company bought ReplayTV, a maker of PVR systems, and Sensory Science Corporation, a company selling dual-deck DVD/VCR systems under the GoVideo brand name.

On March 21, 2003, SONICblue filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and sold off its main product lines.

On April 16, 2003, D&M Holdings, the parent company of Denon Ltd. and Marantz Japan Inc. purchased virtually all operating assets from SONICblue and now produces ReplayTV and Rio units under a new subsidiary, Digital Networks North America (DNNA), Inc. The last piece of the company was effectively sold in late 2003, when Best Data acquired the Diamond's Supra modem business along with rights to the Diamond Multimedia name for use in a new video card division.