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S3 Jumps On GPGPU Bandwagon

Posted by Soulskill on from the trying-to-get-their-groove-back dept.

arcticstoat writes "It's sometimes easy to forget that the PC graphics market isn't owned by ATI and Nvidia, and the company that first gave us 3D acceleration, S3, is very much still around. So much so, in fact, that it's now even developed its own GPGPU technology. S3 claims that its Chrome 400 chips can accelerate gaming physics, HD video transcoding/encoding and photo enhancement. To demonstrate the latter, S3 has released a free download called S3FotoPro, which enhances color clarity and reduces haze in photos. However, the company hasn't yet revealed whether it plans to support OpenCL in the future." The Tech Report also points out that this could allow S3's parent company, VIA, to compete with Intel and AMD in graphics processing technology.

9 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Re:what by Poltras · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not true. Some filters which took minutes in Adobe Photoshop CS2 only took half a second in CS4. Just doing a low-pass filter or a blur to get noise reduction would, of course, be doable by a single cpu correctly. But once you go professional, the time saved through using GPGPU is amazing, and means you can see results in realtime, so you can make adjustments much much faster.

    --
    Of Code And Men
  2. Easy to forget by Spatial · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's sometimes easy to forget that the PC graphics market isn't owned by ATI and Nvidia

    That's right. Intel own it too.

    1. Re:Easy to forget by Teun · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yep, Intel has like 60% market share.

      And they have the worse performance.

      And they have some of the easiest Linux support.

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      "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
  3. Re:what by DigiShaman · · Score: 2, Informative

    nVidia already has this market covered with the Cuda API. In fact, the new version of photoshop is GPGPU accelerated with nVidia cards that support Cuda.

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    Life is not for the lazy.
  4. Re:not the first time we hear that S3 can compete. by OrangeTide · · Score: 3, Informative

    Long ago they used to be, back when ATI and Trident were big names in the video card business.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  5. Re:not the first time we hear that S3 can compete. by aliquis · · Score: 2, Informative

    3Dfx got bought by Nvidia, so no.

  6. Direct3D texture compression by Joce640k · · Score: 2, Informative

    The original name for "DXTC" was .... "S3TC"

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texture_compression

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    No sig today...
  7. Re:not the first time we hear that S3 can compete. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Informative

    And S3 got bought by VIA, so yes.

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    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  8. Re:not the first time we hear that S3 can compete. by sortius_nod · · Score: 2, Informative

    As I stated in an post further up - the Trio and Virge cards are what S3 made a killing on.

    I actually remember a server board that basically required a Trio - other cards would cause the system to hang mid use. They were great little cards and even were able to have expanded memory added.