News and New Products

Graphics-accelerator vendors turn to SGRAM

-- EDN, 6/6/1996

 The long-expected move to synchronous memory for graphics frame buffers has begun. Both ATI and Matrox have adopted synchronous graphics RAM (SGRAM) for use with their latest 64-bit graphics-accelerator ICs. The memory offers double the bandwidth of extended-data-out DRAM, reaching a peak data rate greater than 600 Mbytes/sec.

The MGA Mystique from Matrox represents the company's first product that squarely targets mainstream desktop computers. The Mystique employs the same 2-D graphical-user-interface acceleration engine the company employs in its Millennium architecture for the workstation market. The Mystique's MGA-1064SG IC adds hardware-accelerated 3-D support with perspective-correct texture mapping, and an integrated 135-MHz RAMDAC. The IC also includes video-scaling capability with bidirectional interpolation. Matrox also has developed a proprietary interface for add-on modules and expects to offer options, such as an MPEG decoder, this summer.

ATI, meanwhile, targets the business (2-D only) PC market with its SGRAM-based ATI-264VT2. The IC targets video-playback applications and includes bidirectional interpolation and hardware to accelerate parts of the MPEG-decoding task, including the planar-to-packed-data conversion. You can add an MPEG decoder or a TV tuner via ATI's proprietary multimedia channel.

The ATI-264VT2 IC costs $28 (10,000) and is available now. Board-level products have not yet debuted, but OEMs that incorporate the IC onto motherboards can leverage ATI's retail line of add-on modules this summer. The Matrox Mystique board costs $279 with 2 Mbytes of memory. Matrox also offers the boards on an OEM basis and sells the MGA-1064SG IC to OEMs for motherboard implementations.

—by Maury Wright

Matrox Graphics Inc, Dorval, PQ, Canada. (514) 685-2630.

ATI Technologies Inc, Thornhill, ON, Canada. (905) 882-2600.