Wave Issue 9704 2/28/97 Article 4-01

***TriTech - Pyramid3D
by David Lohse

Upping the ante in the 3D accelerator race, TriTech Microelectronics
International has released the first members of their Pyramid3D family,
the TR25201 and TR25202. The chips offer a single-chip solution for the
3D pipeline, providing an integrated geometry processor (TR25201 only),
primitive processor and pixel processor. The design utilizes a single
unified memory architecture, with support for up to 32 MB of SDRAM,
SGRAM or EDO DRAM (memory bandwidth of up to 800 MB/sec). In addition
to a reported performance of up to 1 M textured polygons/sec, Pyramid3D
includes an integrated on-chip VGA core.

According to Winston Chen, TriTech's Director of Marketing for
Multimedia Products, the Pyramid3D is focusing on life-like quality,
which it achieves through its advanced lighting effects. In addition,
the comprehensive perspective correction is applied to not only
textures, but lighting, coloring and fog, which in addition to
efficient bump mapping, radiosity rendering and environmental mapping
allows the Pyramid3D to achieve a photorealism not seen before on the
PC.

Specifications include:

Memory: 2-32 MB of SDRAM, SGRAM or EDO DRAM
Frame Buffer: 24- or 16-bit with support for double and triple
buffering and stereo imaging
Depth Buffer: 24- or 16-bit
Resolution: Up to 1600x1200
Performance: Peak 1.3M shaded, 16bpp textured triangles/sec
Peak 1M shaded, 16bpp textured, z-buffered triangles/sec
Peak pixel fill rate of 50M pixels/sec
Texturing: Bilinear and trilinear filtering
Texture sizes from 32x32 to 1024x1024
32-bit RGBA, 16-bit RGBA and 16-bit RGB supported
Rendering to texture maps supported
Rendering: Perspectively correct Gouraud shading, transparency and
texture mapping; real-time bump mapping, specular
highlights, single-pass radiosity rendering, fog and
depth cueing
API Support: Direct3D & DirectDraw, OpenGL, Heidi

Pyramid3D is also programmable: the geometry engine is programmable,
allowing new 3D primitives commands and other features to be added, as
well as enabling lighting, shading and atmospheric models to be
uploaded. And the programmability of the pixel processor allows many
different shading models to be realized.

The chip solution is targeted at both entertainment and business
applications (CAD and modeling). The TR2502 is available now for $50 in
quantities of 10,000; the TR25201 will be available for sampling in Q2
with unit costs of $70 for quantities of 10,000. According to Mr. Chen,
TriTech is currently working with many different hardware (board)
manufacturers as well as OEMs, with consumer boards expected to hit the
market in either late Q2 or early Q3. Reference boards are already in
production, with 3 different configurations due in several weeks.

www.tritech-sg.com