Glaze3D: Yet Another 3D Chipset 83
Dixie_Flatline writes "This chipset looks pretty cool to me. I'm suprised that it hasn't shown up on slashdot before now, based on it's immense hoopyness. And it's got Linux support...and it hasn't even been released yet. Go here. " Basically this thing claims to crush everything else on the market. If it makes for better games, I'm all for it.
Glaze3D solves an irrelevant problem: fillrate (Score:1)
With 250+ Megapixel fillrates these days, more fillrate is nice but is not the key bottleneck. Remember that there are only 1.83 million pixels on a 1600x1200 screen. And Glaze3D's technological approach of using embedded RAM is not particularly unique (see PixelFusion or to a lesser extent, S3's Savage4). Also, in general, chips with embedded RAM get higher memory bandwidths, but are manufactured with processes in such a way that the logic is not as fast as with logic-optimized ASICs.
The key bottleneck is vertex geometry processing, and is constrained currently by the Intel CPU floating point, and to a lesser degree, by Intel's AGP bus and memory bus.
When Microsoft or Linux come out with 3D GUIs that require anisotropic texture filtering (and thus huge fillrates), then Glaze3D and similar chips will be more relevant. Potentially antialiasing (via accumulation or "T" buffers) and/or multi-pass rendering of shadows could be attractive enough features to drive demand for greater fillrates, but I suspect Bitboy's competitors (3dfx, Nvidia, etc.) will be "good enough" on that score.
--LP
More details (Score:1)
Basically, it has every important feature from every card on the market, running about 3-4x faster (I'm not sure if I buy this, but...). It also has full OpenGL and Directx 7 support, but isn't listed as being Linux compatable.
Now, what it doesn't have, and what I'm waiting for: full geometry. I don't really care what this thing is packing, if someone (I'm betting on Matrox at the moment) can get a card with full onboard geometry[1], that what I'm waiting for. (Oh, and at least 128MB memory, preferably 256--I hate AGP.)
1: I don't mean geometry boosters, or a crutch for my poor celerons; I want complete FP and vector units on card, with whatever bus mastering it would take to circumvent the processors. (Can AGP tap into core for more than textures? That would just about fit the bill, esp. at 4x.) Sure it'll cost a fortune, but Halo II is worth it
Re:Vapor[hard]ware... (Score:1)
Interview with BitBoys at FullOn3D (Score:1)
Fill rates vs. CPU speed... (Score:1)
Sorry I don't have numbers, but I need to do some research before I can say anything about that (if someone would like to do that for me... =)
-- ioctl
Glaze3D linux support.... (Score:1)
So much for the linux support hype....
do I need this? No, but... (Score:1)
Glaze3D - Nah.....I don't think so. (Score:1)
Excuse me while I laugh my ass off. Who gives a crap about the actual card then, just give me the simulator. I'll add my own features thanks.
And, the images shown could be knocked up in a couple of days in Photoshop or Gimp. Check the water reflection shot. It lookes EXTRMELY fake to me.
The depth-of-field looks plain wrong. Why aren't the shots hi-res?? Photoshop filters look even more obvious in hi-res.
Imagine the spec of an NT box required to emulate a chip like the Glaze at full speed. They don't exist.
I wouldn't take it too seriously if I were you. They have a staff of 7, only 2 of which are designing the Glaze hardware. Hmm 2 engineers vs however many NVidia or SGI or 3Dfx employ.
Someone somewhere is having a big laugh. I'll be very, very surprised if ANYTHING EVER comes of this.
Vapor[hard]ware... (Score:2)
This sounds like a hoax to me, or a bunch of really hopeful kids with an impressive spec, but nothing else. I would have the following questions to any group venturing on their own to design and build their graphic accelerator without bundles of cash and/or experience:
-How will you pay for the design tools? EDA tools to compile the HDL design, place & route, simulate, etc. cost more than 100K per seat. It is nothing like grabbing gcc or egcs from the nearest Linux ftp site and starting coding..
-How will they prototype their chip? A graphics accelerator will not fit in most FPGAs, so even that cheapest prototyping method is out of the question. They will probably need to rent/acquire hardware emulators or have prototypes built, which cost a lot of $$$$.
-Then again, it doesn't only take a bunch of us geeks & 3D programming wizzes (plural of 'wiz', anyone?) to put a 3D chip on the market-you need hordes of suits for marketing, advertising and other stuff, too..They don't come in cheap.
With all due respect for Finnish technical talent(Nokia and of course Linus comes to mind), I believe they will fail miserably. If this is for real, that is.
Re:I think I heard about this a while ago... (Score:1)
This thing has a huge coolness factor. Not just because its damn fast, but also because of the way in which it was designed. Basically, the entire thing was designed with an advanced hardware simulator. They actually had completed drivers before they had any hardware. In fact, I believe they still don't have any hardware. That, when combined with the fact that it was announced so early, kind of makes people think it's vaporware. I sure hope it isn't, but I don't have much to support that hope.
Re:Future Crew? (Score:1)
It makes sense that the trench work involved in writing a game only seems to happen when you're employed by someone and under a contractual obligation to read those joystick specs and support all those sound cards and all those video cards, etc, etc
This is what made the demoscene so cool; you got to show
At any rate, to stay kinda on topic, the Glaze3D doesn't quite look like Vaporware to me, but I'm sure just like any news, it's significance and excitement tends to decrease exponentially as the release date approaches as other manufacturers flood the market with their competative offerings.
We'll see.
I do admit I get more and more excited as the PC offerings align themselves to the specs of the current generation of arcade consoles.
SirSlud
BTW, people seem to forget Scream Tracker, which was finished, for all intensive purposes, and is still being used by trackers all around the world.
Re:NOT Bogus (Score:1)
On a related note, I would like to take this opportunity to announce that I'm building a cold fusion reactor. It is expected to go live in May of 2048. I am currently up to date with my project plan and the crayon drawing looks great.
-Barry
Ummm...this is my sig...or something
Re:Hoax? (Score:1)
Glaze3D from the view of Pyramid3D developer (Score:2)
Years ago Bitboys approached VLSI with the promise that they had designed a 3D-engine. When the money was assigned, it was found out that it was actually only code directly from some game, and had no any real definitions behind it. The actual P3D development was done by VLSI Solution, who had 20 people working on it full-time since 1995, for over three years. Bitboys were bought out of the project around 1997.
After Bitboys no longer worked with P3D, Glaze3D appeared out of nowhere. [I remember seeing mostly the same Glaze3D page on Bitboys web site way over a year ago. Now it only has two new images, and probably some revised specs.] A lot of Glaze3D's publicity material is actually from P3D demos, including some of the screenshots on the page. Even if there is something real now, in the beginning Bitboys were advertising technology that didn't exist with the demo material from completely another project.
In short: Glaze3D is most likely an illegal product that will probably never be released.
Pyramid3D does exist, and there are beta versions of the actual card. It was demoed at Assembly '97, IIRC, and in summer 1998 it was nearly completed. But as we know, TriTech dropped the project and P3D will never hit the shelves. There may be some P3D-based products, like inexpensive video converters, though. TriTech was supposed to do the marketing for P3D, but they actually never did anything else than host a webpage.
P3D would have had good 2D (300MHz RAMDAC), good 3D (probably not much chance against today's cards), and both video-in and video-out that support basically all usual formats (NTSC, PAL, SECAM) and their mutations. [I have seen some NTSC->PAL conversions done with P3D, very good quality for real-time conversion.] It was the first card to have ready DirectX6 drivers. Open source drivers for Linux/FreeBSD were also developed. The target price was $100 with 16MB RAM. And this was early 1998. What a pity.
Hope this clears some points about the relationship between Pyramid3D and Glaze3D.
-sph
Re:But do I need this? (Score:1)
The Matrox was the best 2D card I've ever seen - in fact, in some 2D tests it's actually faster than the TNT. (Of course the TNT whomps it on 3D).
The other nice thing about the Matrox is that kernel 2.2.x has explicit support for the Mystique when it comes to the all important frame buffer console. 1152x864x32bpp with the nice SPARC font (12x22) is a damn nice working environment.
Also, all the StarOffice/S3V Xserver problems went away, too.
Finally (in praise of the card I've just ditched) the Mystiques make great partners for a Voodoo2, cos they put out a very strong, clean video signal which survives the passthru better than most.
Peter.
Re:It comes in Quad?! (Score:1)
And what processor(s) on earth can possibly feed this monster enough data to use it to its full potential?
None. At least among the consumer CPUs that will be shipping for the next several years.
Which is why onboard geometry acceleration, a la NVidia's NV10, is going to become a requirement in fast accelerators. All the extra fill rate power is pretty useless if you're waiting for the CPU the whole time.
800 fps? (Score:1)
impossible. A card being able to push that many triangles while possible, doesn't take into account the other factors of a game. Sony's PS2 can possibly real-time render objects, but that doesn't take into consideration AI or game-physics or anything else, if you only are displaying the graphics then fine you might get 800 fps(I still doubt it) but you won't get it in quake
Re:Glaze3D solves an irrelevant problem: fillrate (Score:1)
The next generation nVidia part (NV10) will have Geometric Transform and Lighting handled on the card. That's the end of that bottleneck.
Intel isn't too happy about this, because all of a sudden a 300 MHz machine becomes very gameworthy.
Re:Glaze3D solves an irrelevant problem: fillrate (Score:1)
Mmmm... Doughnuts... Ahhh.... (Score:1)
Hoax? (Score:1)
came to the conclusion that this was a clever hoax
/scam. Can anybody else come up with some more
concrete evidence?
I think I heard about this a while ago... (Score:1)
They said it would be out some time in '99 or '00 - sounds like they're basically on schedule. Should be interesting to see how it compares with what 3Dfx (or is it 3dfx now? I can never remember) comes up with next...
Vaporware? (Score:1)
Ohh MAN! I want one NOW! (Score:1)
Make sure it works on Alpha Boxes!! Please!
pana
Probably vapourware (Score:1)
Looks nice, but... (Score:2)
----
But do I need this? (Score:1)
Assuming the only game I play on my Linux machine is Civ:CTP and I don't dual boot, do these new cards offer me anything? I don't think so, in fact, it's getting hard for me to justify any new hardware purchases, except a bit more RAM and maybe a faster processor (and that's just for compressing MP3's!).
Please, correct me if I've missed something.
It comes in Quad?! (Score:1)
That is for a single chipset - single! What the hell do you do with 128MB of graphics memory?
The quad gives you 4x all those numbers... 4800 million texels, 60 million triangles, Quake at 800fps?! Oh, and of couse the ability to have 512MB of graphics memory...
All this and they say that it will be affordable too.
And what processor(s) on earth can possibly feed this monster enough data to use it to its full potential?
Needless to say, I want one
NOT Bogus (Score:1)
The Bitboys site has been around for quite some time. The Glaze3D has been in development for a few years as well. But until now it hadn't been announced that they had the chip manufactured, this appears to be true now, which follows their development roadmap.
They already manufactured a chipset a few years ago in the days of the Voodoo 1 era. Anyone remember the Pyramid3D by Tritech? This was them.
So before crying FAKE! learn the facts.
O, and they come from the DemoScene (Future Crew anyone?) so I imagine they know what they're doing.
history repeats itself (Score:3)
Interestingly, they are using embedded DRAM, the same technology Rendition is supposedly using in their next-generation chip (if they ever release one).
Anyway, it looks like a cool chip, provided it has a robust OpenGL implementation for X.
I bet these come with the new Amigas! (Score:1)
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
opensource drivers...? (Score:1)
In any case, I hope they at least release the specs. Imagine running this card on a variety of platforms: Linux, Be, Win32, but also MacOS/linuxppc (hope they make a pci(66) version too), and maybe even on Alpha's (NT/Linux) and Amiga's.
No way they could support all of those on their own. Even though their drivers are probably already pretty mature, due to the way they developed their chip (PCI card linked to a simulation computer if i understand correctly), they would probably not think of supporting some of the more 'exotic' platforms.
Everybody would be more happy (them selling more boards, and us being able to use one everywhere)
Re:Motion blurring. (Score:1)
Re:Glaze3D solves an irrelevant problem: fillrate (Score:1)
Re:Wow (Score:1)
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
Sounds great (Score:1)
Linux support? (Score:1)
Motion blurring. (Score:1)
Presumably the root of all these difficulties are that as we bang vertices over to the accelerator, it considers each frame as a stand alone rendering. This was what OpenGL was designed for, after all. What, to me, seems to be missing is the ability to pass the velocity for a vertex over to the card as well, hence opening the floodgates for manufacturers to add motion blurring as they see fit.
Or frame interpolation, good idea? Send to card at 25fps, render at 75fps, freeing up a truckload of processor time and a truckload of AGP bandwidth into the deal.
Crivens, at this rate we may actually see some innovation rather than merely bumping up fillrates month on month.
Dave
Re:But do I need this? (Score:1)
(Then again, no offense intended, but those Virge cards are crap.
Re:Linux support? (Score:1)
Re:NOT Bogus (Score:1)
Re:Linux support? (Score:1)
Q. What operating systems does the Glaze3D(TM) support?
A. Glaze3D(TM) supports all versions of Windows and Windows NT, including the new Windows 2000. It also supports Linux and is capable of working in any other PCI/AGP environment.
Re:It comes in Quad?! (Score:1)
wait for them to deliver, vaporware is more common then we like to believe..
Re:Future Crew? (Score:1)
Re:Vapor[hard]ware... (Score:1)
To get the manufacturing done and then drivers written is a great deal of work though.
I think they have a chance.
If..
They are phenominally talented.
They get venture capital and expand
Their technology is licenced by an existing 3d manufacturer who has fallen behind the pack.
Failing that I think they have a good chance at making the silicon and selling the chips for use in arcade machines. They don't need standardised drivers etc.
Of course they will sink into nothingness if their fill rate and tri-setup isn't top notch.
Geometry acceleration would have been an advantage too.
And then there's the golden rule of 3D cards.
---Rendering speed only counts in a shipping product.
I happen to have a unique view on things... (Score:1)
Better Games??? (Score:1)
The great console games were from the 16 bit wars era, not this new fangled 3d crap they've been pushing.
I just want a Chrono Trigger sequel really, then I'll be happy.
Re:linux support.. easy to put in faq (Score:1)
Sounds like they have the right tools, anyway (Score:1)
EDRAM from Infineon (Score:1)
recently spun off Siemens Semiconductor operation.
Infineon say they'll have 0.17u EDRAM at about the
same time the Glaze is supposed to be available.
It's likely that they still have lots of design work to do before this chip tapes out.
Every graphics chip supplier will need EDRAM for the next generation, and from what I've heard,
they're all working on it.
We'll see who has it first.
Virge cards (Score:1)
...on the other hand, I just bought an STB Velocity 4400 cheap and I can't wait for it to get here.
--
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. "
Re:Future Crew? (Score:1)
It is the same guys. Look in the "Team" section.
Mika Tuomi and Sami Tammilehto are from Future Crew.
Crystal Dreams II was a much better demo then Second Reality.
This has been rehashed a million times in comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos, in 1993 that is. I think the basic consensus was that if you are a programmer CD2 was really interesting, but if you just show it to your regular friends/family, it is boring. SR was much more entertaining for regular folks.
Whatever happened to Triton? What happened to Into the Shadows?
Probably the same thing as a million other non-commercial game products. It takes so much more to make a playable game than a demo. (demo as in demoscene not as in gamedemo) Demo programming is fun because of programming against unusual constraints, and you can see and hear the results. What fun is there in figuring out how to read the joystick, or figuring out why it crashes on some computers? (That's a rhetorical question.)