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.

VIA

[blind biker]

Looks like VIA is really serious about this whole x86 business - they are the little (compared to Intel and AMD) thorn in the side to the big boys. With so many bald decisions regarding their own x86 roadmap, it's a miracle they're still around!

What I mean is: AMD has been on the razor's edge for many years already, always in danger of unprofitability due to the thin or sometimes non-existent margins they had in order to keep with the top-dog. And AMD has a substantial slice of the x86 market, definitely way bigger than VIA. Imagine what sort of creative management it takes for VIA to stay competitive.

S3's role in VIA's x86 plans could be crucial. I can definitely see them help VIA into the emerging netbook market. Cheap and low-power, is what VIA and S3 are good at, and that's exactly what netbooks are all about.

Potentially interesting

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I can't say I'm wildly optimistic about the likely power of an S3 GPGPU setup, given the history of S3 GPUs. On the other hand, because their performance is likely to be somewhat mediocre, and they certainly don't have the marketshare or power of someone like NVIDIA, they are more likely to do things like release documentation in order to attract development for their platform. In general, the dominant player has the greatest incentive to go it alone, keep things proprietary, and generally try to leverage their power, while the second stringers are much more likely to be helpful in their attempt to build marketshare.

Re:VIA

[PineGreen]

Incidentally, I put together a completelly fanless audio system based around via esther at 1Ghz (the only noise producing thing is HD and I used a quiet barracuda HD and even that gets annoying after a while). The little box soon expanded into torrent downloader, file and web server and is incredibly stable platform. The best ever spent $400 (it is actually more stable than my 8 core xeon monster worth $8000 last year that I use at work).

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

[tibman]

S3 is from the age of 3dfx cards and pre Nvidia Geforce cards. I don't remember any of their cards being very successful? Other than some late Savage cards, but even then, not equal to 3dfx, ATI, or Nvidia offerings.

I still have stuff with 3dfx logos.. i miss them :(

Yep

[Sycraft-fu]

First we need to see a video card that performs well. Serious. The whole reason that nVidia (and ATi) cards can do well at GPGPU stuff is that they are fast at gaming stuff.

Gaming graphics are at their heart a whole lot of parallel single precision floating point math. Thus, that is what modern video cards are good at calculating. Well the GPGPU idea was just someone saying "Hey, these things are amazingly fast as number crunching, and graphics aren't the only sort of thing this is relivant to. Let's get an API on there to let people use it as they wish."

Well that worked out great, however the whole thing was predicated on good hardware. Since the hardware does it's job very quickly, much quicker than a CPU can, it is worthwhile to use it for other things. That wouldn't be the case if the hardware were slow. If the hardware didn't really do anything faster than a CPU, well then why not juse use a CPU? Easier to program for, more readily available and all that.

So if S3 wishes to be taken seriously for GPGPU, they need to show they can be serious for games first. Show some serious vertex/pixel crunching capability. If your card is capable of that, it should be capable of generalizing that to any parallel FP task (provided the API is there and the hardware is designed right). However if you lag ass at graphics, I'm not going to believe you are worth a shit for other stuff. Graphics are more or less the ideal case: Embarrassingly parallel, not much branching, etc. This is no surprise, GPUs were designed to do graphics well. However it also means, if you aren't good at graphics, you aren't good at GPGPU.

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

[sortius_nod]

ATi, Trident, Matrox, S3, the good old days... I remember when I worked in a computer shop, we used to burn through S3 Virge and S3 Trio cards like they were going out of fashion.

Unfortunately they were left for dead when people no longer needed a 2D card to go with their 3DFX card - the combo cards from Diamond were killer cards and removed the need for the usual S3 Virge/Trio or Trident.

Re:Yep

[bendodge]

Do games later.
For now, let's see some really small, low-power, low-heat video chips with enough power for HD video and basic 3D acceleration. If they do that and release documentation for Linux, they can pwn the netbook market. Guess what S3 appears to be aiming at?