Texas Instruments Graphics Architecture (TIGA) is a graphics interface standard created 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 ...

that defined the software interface to graphics processors. Using this standard, any software written for TIGA should work correctly on a TIGA-compliant graphics interface card. Texas Instrument's

TMS34010 The TMS34010, developed by Texas Instruments and released in 1986, was the first programmable graphics processor integrated circuit. While specialized graphics hardware existed earlier, such as blitters, the TMS34010 chip is a microprocessor ...

and TMS34020 Graphics System Processors (GSP) were the original TIGA-compliant graphics processors. The TIGA standard is independent of resolution and

color depth Color depth, also known as bit depth, is either the number of bits used to indicate the color of a single pixel, or the number of bits used for each color component of a single pixel. When referring to a pixel, the concept can be defined as bit ...

which provides a certain degree of

future proof Future-proofing (also futureproofing) is the process of anticipating the future and developing methods of risk mitigation, minimizing the effects of shocks and stresses of future events. Future-proofing is used in industries such as infrastruct ...

ing. This standard was designed for high-end graphics. However, TIGA was not widely adopted. Instead,

VESA VESA (), formally known as Video Electronics Standards Association, is an American standards organization, technical standards organization for computer display standards. The organization was incorporated in California in July 1989To retrieve ...

and Super VGA became the ''de facto'' standard for PC graphics devices after the VGA.

Clone Hardware

The primary manufacturers of mainstream TIGA cards for the PC clone market included Number Nine Visual Technology and

Hercules Hercules (, ) is the Roman equivalent of the Greek divine hero Heracles, son of Jupiter and the mortal Alcmena. In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and for his numerous far-ranging adventures. The Romans adapted the Gr ...

. Number Nine Visual Technology graphics cards using Texas Instruments' TIGA co-processors were made from about 1986 to 1992, including the '' Pepper'' and '' GX'' series.'

manufactured cards such as the ''Graphics Station'' and ''Chrome'' lines which were marketed primarily toward users of

Microsoft 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 ...

. Desktop Computing ''AGA 1024'' card was capable of emulating TIGA standards, as well as the

IBM 8514 IBM 8514 is a graphics card manufactured by IBM and introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of personal computers in 1987. It supports a display resolution of pixels with 256 colors at 43.5 Hz ( interlaced), or at 60 Hz ( non-interlaced ...

. In the early 1990s, Texas Instruments France (which had marketing control for TIGA architecture and GSP chipsets in Europe) experimented with manufacturing and selling its own range of consumer oriented video cards based on TIGA and aimed at speeding up the user experience of Windows. These products were named ''TIGA Diamond'' (34020 based) and ''TIGA Star'' (34010 based), and provided a platform for selling TI DRAM and video palette chips as well as the GSP chips themselves.

Impact

Despite the superiority of the technology in comparison to typical Super VGA cards of the era, the relatively high cost and emerging local bus graphics standards meant that IT distributors and PC manufacturers could not see a niche for these products at consumer level. The (limited) success of the graphics cards paved the way for products based upon various derivatives and clones of IBM's 8514 architecture. Part of the effort to make graphics accelerators useful required TI to convince Microsoft that the internal interfaces to its Windows Operating System had to be adaptable instead of hard-coded. Indeed, all versions of Windows prior to Windows 3.0 were " hard-coded" to specific graphics hardware.

References

External links

*TMS340 Interface User's Guid
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*TMS340 FAMILY GRAPHICS LIBRARY USER'S GUID
spvu027
Texas Instruments hardware Graphics cards {{compu-hardware-stub

Clone Hardware

Impact

See also

References

External links