S3 Graphics, Ltd. was an American computer graphics company. The company sold the

Trio Trio may refer to: Music Groups * Trio (music), an ensemble of three performers, or a composition for such an ensemble ** Jazz trio, pianist, double bassist, drummer ** Minuet and trio, a form in classical music ** String trio, a group of three ...

ViRGE A virge or verge () is a type of rod, made of wood. Etymology Originally it was one or more branches (the French often use ''verges'', the plural of its equivalent, as the normal word for a rod, the rarer singular ''verge'' rather indicates a ...

Savage Savage may refer to: * Savage (pejorative term), a derogatory term to describe a member of a people the speaker regards as primitive and uncivilized Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Bill Savage, in the 2000 AD ''Invasion!'' ...

, and Chrome series of graphics processors. Struggling against competition from

3dfx Interactive 3dfx Interactive, Inc. was an American computer hardware company headquartered in San Jose, California, founded in 1994, that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics, 3D graphics processing units, and later, video cards. It was a pionee ...

, ATI and

Nvidia Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curti ...

, it merged with hardware manufacturer

Diamond Multimedia Diamond Multimedia is an American company that specializes in many forms of multimedia technology. They have produced graphics cards, motherboards, modems, sound cards and MP3 players; however, the company began with the production of the TrackS ...

in 1999. The resulting company renamed itself to

SONICblue Incorporated SONICblue Incorporated (NASDAQ:SBLU) was a public company based in Santa Clara, California. The firm was a manufacturer of home audio/video equipment with an estimated revenue of $100M - $250M and approximately 700 employees. SONICblue first file ...

, and, two years later, the graphics portion was spun off into a new joint effort with

VIA Technologies VIA Technologies, Inc. () is a Taiwanese manufacturer of integrated circuits, mainly motherboard chipsets, CPUs, and memory. It was once the world's largest independent manufacturer of motherboard chipsets. As a fabless semiconductor company, ...

. The new company focused on the mobile graphics market. VIA Technologies' stake in S3 Graphics was purchased by

HTC HTC Corporation ( zh, t=宏達國際電子股份有限公司, p=Hóngdá Guójì Diànzǐ Gǔfèn Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī, first=t), or High Tech Computer Corporation (abbreviated and trading as HTC), is a Taiwanese consumer electronics corporatio ...

in 2011.

History

S3 was founded and incorporated in January 1989 by

Dado Banatao Diosdado P. Banatao (born May 23, 1946) is a Filipino entrepreneur and engineer working in the high-tech industry, credited with having developed the first 10-Mbit Ethernet CMOS with silicon coupler data-link control and transceiver chip, the fir ...

and Ronald Yara. It was named S3 as it was Banatao's third startup company. The company's first products were among the earliest

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

(GUI) accelerators. These chips were popular with video card manufacturers, and their followup designs, including the Trio64, made strong inroads with OEMs. S3 took over the high end 2D market just prior to the popularity of 3D accelerators. S3's first 3D accelerator chips, the

series, controlled half of the market early on but could not compete against the high end 3D accelerators from ATI,

, and

3Dfx 3dfx Interactive, Inc. was an American computer hardware company headquartered in San Jose, California, founded in 1994, that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics processing units, and later, video cards. It was a pioneer in the f ...

. In some cases, the chips performed worse than software-based solutions without an accelerator. As S3 lost market share, their offerings competed in the mid-range market. Their next design, the

Savage 3D Savage was a product-line of PC graphics chipsets designed by S3. Graphics Processors Savage 3D At the 1998 E3 Expo S3 introduced the first Savage product, Savage3D. Compared to its ViRGE-derived predecessor (Trio3D), Savage3D was a technol ...

, was released early and suffered from driver issues, but it introduced

S3TC S3 Texture Compression (S3TC) (sometimes also called DXTn, DXTC, or BCn) is a group of related lossy texture compression algorithms originally developed by Iourcha et al. of S3 Graphics, Ltd. for use in their Savage 3D computer graphics accele ...

, which became an industry standard. S3 bought Number Nine's assets in 1999, then merged with

. The resulting company renamed itself SONICblue, refocused on consumer electronics, and sold its graphics business to

. Savage-derived chips were integrated into numerous VIA motherboard

chipset In a computer system, a chipset is a set of electronic components on one or more integrated circuits that manages the data flow between the processor, memory and peripherals. The chipset is usually found on the motherboard of computers. Chips ...

s. Subsequent discrete derivations carried the brand names DeltaChrome and GammaChrome. In July 2011,

HTC Corporation HTC Corporation ( zh, t=宏達國際電子股份有限公司, p=Hóngdá Guójì Diànzǐ Gǔfèn Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī, first=t), or High Tech Computer Corporation (abbreviated and trading as HTC), is a Taiwanese consumer electronics corporatio ...

announced they were buying VIA Technologies' stake in S3 Graphics, thus becoming the majority owner of S3 Graphics. In November, the

United States International Trade Commission The United States International Trade Commission (USITC or I.T.C.) is an agency of the United States federal government that advises the legislative and executive branches on matters of trade. It was created by Congress in 1916 as the U.S. Tari ...

ruled against S3 in a patent dispute with Apple.

Graphics controllers

* S3 911, 911A (June 10, 1991) - S3's first

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

accelerators (16/256-color, high-color acceleration) * S3 924 - 24-bit true-color acceleration * S3 801, 805, 805i - mainstream

DRAM Dram, DRAM, or drams may refer to: Technology and engineering * Dram (unit), a unit of mass and volume, and an informal name for a small amount of liquor, especially whisky or whiskey * Dynamic random-access memory, a type of electronic semicondu ...

VLB Windows accelerators (16/256-color, high-color acceleration) * S3 928 - 24/32-bit true-color acceleration, DRAM or

VRAM Video random-access memory (VRAM) is dedicated computer memory used to store the pixels and other graphics data as a framebuffer to be rendered on a computer monitor. It often uses a different technology than other computer memory, in order to ...

* S3 805p, 928p - S3's first

PCI PCI may refer to: Business and economics * Payment card industry, businesses associated with debit, credit, and other payment cards ** Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, a set of security requirements for credit card processors * Prov ...

support * S3 Vision864, Vision964 (1994) - 2nd generation Windows accelerators (64-bit wide

framebuffer A framebuffer (frame buffer, or sometimes framestore) is a portion of random-access memory (RAM) containing a bitmap that drives a video display. It is a memory buffer containing data representing all the pixels in a complete video frame. Mode ...

). Support

MPEG-1 MPEG-1 is a Technical standard, standard for lossy compression of video and Audio frequency, audio. It is designed to compress VHS-quality raw digital video and CD audio down to about 1.5 Mbit/s (26:1 and 6:1 compression ratios respectively ...

video acceleration. * S3 Vision868, Vision968 - S3's first motion video accelerator (zoom and YUV→

RGB The RGB color model is an additive color model in which the red, green, and blue primary colors of light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three ...

conversion) *

S3 Trio The S3 Trio range were popular video cards for personal computers and were S3's first fully integrated graphics accelerators. As the name implies, three previously separate components were now included in the same ASIC: the graphics core, RAMDAC ...

32, 64, 64V+, 64V2 (1995) - S3's first integrated (

RAMDAC A Brooktree RAMDAC A RAMDAC (random-access memory digital-to-analog converter) is a combination of three fast digital-to-analog converters (DACs) with a small static random-access memory (SRAM) used in computer graphics display controllers or ...

VGA Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, which became ubiquitous in the IBM PC compatible industry within three years. T ...

) accelerator. The 64-bit versions were S3's most successful product range. *

(no suffix), VX, DX, GX, GX2, Trio3D, Trio3D/2X - S3's first Windows 3D-accelerators. Notoriously poor 3D. Sold well to OEMs mainly because of low price and excellent 2D-performance. *

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 S3 Texture Compression (S3TC) (sometimes also called DXTn, DXTC, or BCn) is a group of related lossy texture compression algorithms originally developed by Iourcha et al. of S3 Graphics, Ltd. for use in their Savage 3D computer graphics accele ...

went on to become an industry standard, and the Savage3D's

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

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 S3 Graphics' Chrome series of graphics accelerators arrived in 2004 with the DeltaChrome line of chips. They were supplied as discrete, mobile, or integrated graphics. Overview In 2004 after the S3 Graphics company spun off their joint-venture ...

- Mobile chipsets * ProSavage, Twister,

UniChrome S3 Graphics' Chrome series of graphics accelerators arrived in 2004 with the DeltaChrome line of chips. They were supplied as discrete, mobile, or integrated graphics. Overview In 2004 after the S3 Graphics company spun off their VIA Technologie ...

, Chrome 9 - Integrated implementations of Savage chipset for

VIA Via or VIA may refer to the following: Arts and entertainment * ''Via'' (Volumes album), 2011 * Via (Thalia Zedek album), 2013 * VIA (music), Soviet and Russian term for a music collective Businesses and organisations * Via Foundation, a Cz ...

motherboards *

GammaChrome S3 Graphics' Chrome series of graphics accelerators arrived in 2004 with the DeltaChrome line of chips. They were supplied as discrete, mobile, or integrated graphics. Overview In 2004 after the S3 Graphics company spun off their joint-venture ...

, DeltaChrome, Chrome 20 series, Chrome 440 series, Chrome 500 series - Discrete cards post acquisition by VIA. S3 chrome s27 pciexpress16x 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 The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by International Organization for Standardization, ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC that sets standards for media coding, includ ...

Decoder

References

External links

*
S3.com products cached from 1997

VIA Graphics

Firingsquad: S3: From Virge to Savage 2000

Techreport: A look at S3's DeltaChrome

The Inquirer: S3's DirectX 10 Roadmap
{{Graphics Processing Unit 1989 establishments in California 2011 disestablishments in California American companies established in 1989 American companies disestablished in 2011 Companies based in Fremont, California Computer companies established in 1989 Computer companies disestablished in 2011 Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Fabless semiconductor companies Graphics hardware companies Semiconductor companies of the United States