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The TMS34010, developed by
Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog ...
and released in 1986, was the first programmable graphics processor
integrated circuit An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip or simply chip, is a set of electronic circuits, consisting of various electronic components (such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors) and their interconnections. These components a ...
. While specialized graphics hardware existed earlier, such as blitters, the TMS34010 chip is a
microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...
which includes graphics-oriented instructions, making it a combination of a CPU and what would later be called a GPU. The chip was heavily used in
arcade video game An arcade video game is an arcade game that takes player input from its controls, processes it through electrical or computerized components, and displays output to an electronic monitor or similar display. All arcade video games are coin-oper ...
s from the late 1980s through the mid 1990s, primarily from
Atari Games Atari Games Corporation was an American producer of arcade video games, active from 1985 to 1999, then as Midway Games West Inc. until 2003. It was formed when the coin-operated video game division of Atari, Inc. was transferred by its owner Wa ...
and
Midway Games Midway Games Inc. (formerly Midway Manufacturing and Bally Midway, and commonly known simply as Midway) was an American video game company that existed from 1958 to 2010. Midway's franchises included ''Mortal Kombat'', ''Rampage (franchise), Ra ...
. It was first used in '' NARC'' in 1988, then other games including '' Hard Drivin''', '' Smash TV'', ''
Mortal Kombat ''Mortal Kombat'' is an American media franchise centered on a series of fighting game, fighting video games originally developed by Midway Games in 1992. The original ''Mortal Kombat (1992 video game), Mortal Kombat'' arcade game spawned Lis ...
'', and ''
NBA Jam ''NBA Jam'' is a List of basketball video games, basketball video game series based on the National Basketball Association (NBA). Initially developed as arcade games by Midway Games, Midway, the game found popularity with its photorealistic digi ...
''. It was also part of computer workstation video accelerator boards in the 1990s. TI later released the TMS34020 with an emphasis on 3D rendering.


History

The design of the TMS34010 was led by Karl Guttag, who previously worked on the
TMS9918 IMAGE:TMS9918A 01.jpg, VDP TMS9918A IMAGE:TMS9918A 02.jpg, VDP TMS9918A The TMS9918 is a video display controller (VDC) manufactured by Texas Instruments, in manuals referenced as "Video Display Processor" (VDP) and introduced in 1979. The TMS9918 ...
video display controller first used in the TI-99/4A. Development took place at TI facilities in
Bedford Bedford is a market town in Bedfordshire, England. At the 2011 Census, the population was 106,940. Bedford is the county town of Bedfordshire and seat of the Borough of Bedford local government district. Bedford was founded at a ford (crossin ...
(UK) and
Houston Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...
(US). First
silicon Silicon is a chemical element; it has symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic lustre, and is a tetravalent metalloid (sometimes considered a non-metal) and semiconductor. It is a membe ...
was working in Houston in December 1985, with shipment of development boards to
IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
's workstation facility in
Kingston, New York Kingston is the only Administrative divisions of New York#City, city in, and the county seat of, Ulster County, New York, United States. It is north of New York City and south of Albany, New York, Albany. The city's metropolitan area is grou ...
, in January 1986.
Midway Games Midway Games Inc. (formerly Midway Manufacturing and Bally Midway, and commonly known simply as Midway) was an American video game company that existed from 1958 to 2010. Midway's franchises included ''Mortal Kombat'', ''Rampage (franchise), Ra ...
was a prolific user of the chip in
arcade video game An arcade video game is an arcade game that takes player input from its controls, processes it through electrical or computerized components, and displays output to an electronic monitor or similar display. All arcade video games are coin-oper ...
s beginning with the run and gun '' Narc'' in 1988. Subsequent Midway games built around the chip include '' Smash TV'' (1990), ''
Mortal Kombat ''Mortal Kombat'' is an American media franchise centered on a series of fighting game, fighting video games originally developed by Midway Games in 1992. The original ''Mortal Kombat (1992 video game), Mortal Kombat'' arcade game spawned Lis ...
'' (1992), and ''
NBA Jam ''NBA Jam'' is a List of basketball video games, basketball video game series based on the National Basketball Association (NBA). Initially developed as arcade games by Midway Games, Midway, the game found popularity with its photorealistic digi ...
'' (1993). The 3D driving simulator '' Hard Drivin''' (1989) from
Atari Games Atari Games Corporation was an American producer of arcade video games, active from 1985 to 1999, then as Midway Games West Inc. until 2003. It was formed when the coin-operated video game division of Atari, Inc. was transferred by its owner Wa ...
contains two of the processors. Atari Games used the chip in other flat-shaded 3D games: '' S.T.U.N. Runner'' (1989), '' Race Drivin''' (1990), and '' Steel Talons'' (1991). TI developed the Texas Instruments Graphics Architecture (TIGA) specification for professional-level video accelerator cards for
IBM PC compatible An IBM PC compatible is any personal computer that is hardware- and software-compatible with the IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC) and its subsequent models. Like the original IBM PC, an IBM PC–compatible computer uses an x86-based central p ...
s, of which the TMS34010 was central. A follow-up processor, the TMS34020, was released in 1989. The chip can be paired with the TMS34082A
floating point In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic on subsets of real numbers formed by a ''significand'' (a signed sequence of a fixed number of digits in some base) multiplied by an integer power of that base. Numbers of this form ...
coprocessor to render three-dimensional graphics. It is used in Midway's 1994 '' Revolution X'' arcade game, even though the game is not fully 3D.


Technical details

The TMS34010 is a bit addressable, 32-bit processor, with two
register file A register file is an array of processor registers in a central processing unit (CPU). The instruction set architecture of a CPU will almost always define a set of registers which are used to stage data between memory and the functional units on ...
s, each with fifteen registers and sharing a sixteenth stack pointer. The instruction set supports drawing into two-dimensional bitmaps, arbitrary variable-width data, conversion of pixel data to different bit depths, and arithmetic operations on
pixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a Raster graphics, raster image, or the smallest addressable element in a dot matrix display device. In most digital display devices, p ...
s. Positions in bitmaps can be specified either as X, Y coordinates or as addresses. The instruction handles drawing pixels, including Boolean and other operations for combining pixel data, and most of the microcode for graphics functions is to support it. The TMS34010 can execute general purpose programs and is supported by an
ANSI C ANSI C, ISO C, and Standard C are successive standards for the C programming language published by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/WG 14 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the ...
compiler. Most of the arcade video games that use the processor were written in native
assembly language In computing, assembly language (alternatively assembler language or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence bet ...
, not C.


Uses


Arcade video games

The TMS34010 is used in many coin-operated
arcade video game An arcade video game is an arcade game that takes player input from its controls, processes it through electrical or computerized components, and displays output to an electronic monitor or similar display. All arcade video games are coin-oper ...
s manufactured from 1988–1997. Several games use the TMS34020. Atari Games *'' Hard Drivin''' (1989), uses two TMS34010 chips: one for rendering and one for simulation *'' S.T.U.N. Runner'' (1989) *'' Race Drivin''' (1990) *'' Steel Talons'' (1991) Williams / Midway *'' NARC'' (1988) *'' Smash TV'' (1990) *'' Trog'' (1990) *'' High Impact Football'' (1990) *'' Strike Force'' (1991) *'' Super High Impact'' (1991) *'' Terminator 2: Judgment Day'' (1991) *'' Total Carnage'' (1992) *''
Mortal Kombat ''Mortal Kombat'' is an American media franchise centered on a series of fighting game, fighting video games originally developed by Midway Games in 1992. The original ''Mortal Kombat (1992 video game), Mortal Kombat'' arcade game spawned Lis ...
'' (1992) *'' Mortal Kombat II'' (1993) *''
NBA Jam ''NBA Jam'' is a List of basketball video games, basketball video game series based on the National Basketball Association (NBA). Initially developed as arcade games by Midway Games, Midway, the game found popularity with its photorealistic digi ...
'' (1993) *'' Revolution X'' (1994), uses TMS34020 * '' Mortal Kombat 3'' (1995) * '' Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3'' (1995) *'' WWF WrestleMania'' (1995) * '' NHL: 2-on-2 Open Ice Challenge'' (1995) * '' NBA Hangtime'' (1996) * '' NBA Maximum Hangtime'' (1996) * '' Rampage World Tour'' (1997) MicroProse Games *'' F-15 Strike Eagle'' (1991) *''B.O.T.S.S.: Battle of the Solar System'' (1992) Other *''AmeriDarts'' (1989) *'' Battletoads'' (1994) Uses TMS34020.


Video accelerators

The TMS chips are compliant with the 1989 Texas Instruments Graphics Architecture (TIGA) standard, and in the early 1990s were used in professional-level video coprocessor boards for
MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...
,
Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...
,
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 ...
, and SCO Unix. In a 1991 article on graphics adapters, ''
PC Magazine ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and continues . Overview ''PC Mag ...
'' reported that the fastest boards for regenerating
AutoCAD AutoCAD is a 2D and 3D computer-aided design (CAD) software application developed by Autodesk. It was first released in December 1982 for the CP/M and IBM PC platforms as a desktop app running on microcomputers with internal graphics control ...
test images were based on the TMS34010. The ''Aura Scuzzygraph'', ''Radius PowerView'', and ''Radius SuperView'' external
SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices, best known for its use with storage devices such as hard disk drives. SCSI was introduced ...
graphics cards for Mac computers are based on the TMS34010. One of the graphics options for the 1988 Sun386i workstation, the CG5 video card, uses the TMS34010. The Amiga ''A2410'' graphics card uses the TMS34010 and was included in the
Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...
UNIX 2500UX and 3000UX UNIX workstations. It was developed in conjunction with the University of Lowell. When running Amiga UNIX, the card supports the
X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at ...
and gives a high resolution 8-bit display. The card can also be used when running Amiga OS, with support libraries and some Retargetable Graphics implementations.


Game console

In 1987, TI demonstrated real-time 3D games with stereo sound effects on a
personal computer A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...
, using a small TMS34010 adapter card called ''"The Flippy"''. The Flippy was designed as the basis of a game development system for consoles and as an IBM PC compatible gaming card in its own right. Texas Instruments engineer Michael Denio wrote ''The Adventures of Captain Pixel'' as a demo for the system. In 1988, he released a similar game, '' The Adventures of Captain Comic'', as shareware for MS-DOS. TI made an unsuccessful effort in 1987 and 1988 to convince games makers such as
Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto. It develops, publishes, and releases both video games and video game consoles. The history of Nintendo began when craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi ...
and
Sega is a Japanese video game company and subsidiary of Sega Sammy Holdings headquartered in Tokyo. It produces several List of best-selling video game franchises, multi-million-selling game franchises for arcade game, arcades and video game cons ...
to write 3D games and create a new
console Console may refer to: Computing and video games * System console, a physical device to operate a computer ** Virtual console, a user interface for multiple computer consoles on one device ** Command-line interface, a method of interacting with ...
market.


TMS34020

The successor to the TMS34010, the TMS34020 (1988), provides several enhancements including an interface for a special graphics
floating point In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic on subsets of real numbers formed by a ''significand'' (a signed sequence of a fixed number of digits in some base) multiplied by an integer power of that base. Numbers of this form ...
coprocessor, the TMS34082 (1989). The primary function of the TMS34082 is to allow the TMS340 architecture to generate high quality
three-dimensional In geometry, a three-dimensional space (3D space, 3-space or, rarely, tri-dimensional space) is a mathematical space in which three values (''coordinates'') are required to determine the position (geometry), position of a point (geometry), poi ...
graphics. The performance level of 60 million vertices per second was advanced at the time. The TMS34020 is used in at least two arcade video games: '' Revolution X'' (1994) and '' Battletoads Arcade'' (1994). The ''Rambrandt''
Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...
extension card from ''Progressive Peripherals & Software'' supported up to four TMS34020, for use in
virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a Simulation, simulated experience that employs 3D near-eye displays and pose tracking to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video gam ...
simulations.


Notes


References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite magazine , magazine=Byte , url=https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1986-12/page/n199/mode/2up , title=The TMS34010 Graphics System Processor , last=Killebrew Jr. , first=Carrell R. , page=193 , volume=11 , issue=13 , date=December 1986 * "TI's TMS34020 Graphics System Processor". (31 October 1990). ''
Microprocessor Report ''Microprocessor Report'' is a newsletter covering the microprocessor industry. The publication is accessible only to paying subscribers. To avoid bias, it does not take advertisements. The publication provides extensive analysis of new high-perf ...
''.


External links


TMS34010 promotional video

TMS34010 Users Guide
Computer-related introductions in 1986 TMS34010 Graphics processing units 32-bit microprocessors