S3 Jumps On GPGPU Bandwagon

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.

Re:what

[Poltras]

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.

Easy to forget

[Spatial]

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.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:not the first time we hear that S3 can compete.

[OrangeTide]

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

Re:Easy to forget

[Teun]

Yep, Intel has like 60% market share.

And they have the worse performance.

And they have some of the easiest Linux support.

Re:not the first time we hear that S3 can compete.

[aliquis]

3Dfx got bought by Nvidia, so no.

Direct3D texture compression

[Joce640k]

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

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

Re:not the first time we hear that S3 can compete.

[TheRaven64]

And S3 got bought by VIA, so yes.

Re:not the first time we hear that S3 can compete.

[sortius_nod]

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.