Trident Microsystems
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Trident Microsystems was a fabless semiconductor company that in the 1990s, it became a well-known supplier of integrated circuits (commonly called "chips") for
video display controller A video display controller or VDC (also called a display engine or display interface) is an integrated circuit which is the main component in a video-signal generator, a device responsible for the production of a TV video signal in a computing ...
s used in
video card A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or mistakenly GPU) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display device, such as a computer mo ...
s and on motherboards for
desktop PC A desktop computer (often abbreviated desktop) is a personal computer designed for regular use at a single location on or near a desk due to its size and power requirements. The most common configuration has a case that houses the power supply, ...
s and laptops. In 2003, it transformed itself into being a supplier of display processors for digital televisions (primarily
LCD TV Liquid-crystal-display televisions (LCD TVs) are television sets that use liquid-crystal displays to produce images. They are, by far, the most widely produced and sold television display type. LCD TVs are thin and light, but have some disadvantag ...
s) starting from 2005, at a time when the global LCD TV market started showing strong growth. It filed for
bankruptcy Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor ...
protection in January 2012 and the delisting of its common stock from the NASDAQ stock market was announced shortly thereafter.


History


PC graphics

Established in 1987, Trident gained a reputation for selling inexpensive (for the time) but slow
SVGA Super VGA (SVGA) is a broad term that covers a wide range of computer display standards that extended IBM's VGA specification. When used as shorthand for a resolution, as VGA and XGA often are, SVGA refers to a resolution of 800×600. History I ...
components. Many OEMs built add-in-boards using Trident
VGA Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, which became ubiquitous in the PC industry within three years. The term can no ...
chipsets. As the PC graphics market shifted from simple framebuffer displays (basic VGA color monitor and later multi-resolution SVGA output) to more advanced 2D hardware acceleration such a BitBLT engine and color-space conversion (not to be confused with 3D hardware-acceleration), Trident continued its strategy of selling modestly performing chips at compelling price points. In the mid-1990s, the company (briefly) caught up with its main competition: the TGUI-9680's feature-set was comparable to the
S3 Graphics S3 Graphics, Ltd (commonly referred to as S3) was an American computer graphics company. The company sold the Trio, ViRGE, Savage 3D, and Chrome series of graphics processors. Struggling against competition from 3dfx Interactive, ATI and Nvid ...
Trio64V+, although the Trio64V+ outperformed the 9680 in true-color mode. The rapid introduction of 3D graphics caught many graphics suppliers off guard, including Trident. It was not until the late 1990s that Trident finally released a competitive chip, the TGUI-9880 (Blade3D). By this time, Trident's reach had once again retreated to the low-end OEM market, where it was crowded by
ATI Ati or ATI may refer to: * Ati people, a Negrito ethnic group in the Philippines **Ati language (Philippines), the language spoken by this people group ** Ati-Atihan festival, an annual celebration held in the Philippines *Ati language (China), a ...
, S3, and SiS. Meanwhile, in the laptop market, Trident was an early pioneer of
embedded DRAM Embedded DRAM (eDRAM) is dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) integrated on the same die or multi-chip module (MCM) of an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) or microprocessor. eDRAM's cost-per-bit is higher when compared to equival ...
, a
semiconductor manufacturing Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically integrated circuit (IC) chips such as modern computer processors, microcontrollers, and memory chips such as NAND flash and DRAM that are pres ...
technique which combines a graphics-controller and framebuffer memory on a single chip. The resulting combo-chip saved precious board-space by eliminating several RAM chips normally required for framebuffer storage as well as providing other advantages, offset by a higher manufacturing cost-per-bit. In this market it competed with
NeoMagic NeoMagic Corporation is a fabless semiconductor company and supplier of low-power audio and video integrated circuits for mobile use (MagicMedia). In October 2012, NeoMagic entered into the e-commerce arena with the acquisition of its MercadoMagi ...
. Although Trident enjoyed some success with its 3DImage and Blade3D product-lines, the entry of
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
into PC graphics signaled the end of the bottom-end, graphics-chip market. Trident partnered with motherboard chipset suppliers several times to integrate its graphics technology into a motherboard chipset (i.e.
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CyberALADDiN, VIA MVP4), but these achieved marginal success.


Supplier of digital TV products

Faced with a contracting market and rising research and development costs (due to the increasing sophistication of 3D-graphics rendering), Trident announced a substantial restructuring of the company in June 2003. In late 2003,
XGI XGI Technology Inc. () is based upon the old graphics division of Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) spun off as a separate company, and the graphics assets of Trident Microsystems. It existed from 2003 to 2010. History Founded in June 2003 and h ...
completed the acquisition of Trident's former graphics division, completing the transformation of the company into one focusing on DTV products. From this point on, Trident's research and development was mainly concentrated at its facilities in
Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...
,
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, and a fully owned 115,000-square-foot research and development facility in Shanghai was completed in 2007. Trident quickly gained success in the
LCD TV Liquid-crystal-display televisions (LCD TVs) are television sets that use liquid-crystal displays to produce images. They are, by far, the most widely produced and sold television display type. LCD TVs are thin and light, but have some disadvantag ...
chip market in 2005, providing competitive advantages in image quality and chip integration, outcompeting incumbent flat-panel IC leader
Genesis Microchip Genesis Microchip Inc. was a supplier of integrated circuits (ICs) for video processors in flat panel LCD TVs and Monitors. It was founded in 1987 by Paul Russo in Markham, Ontario, Canada and it became a public company in 1998 and employed over ...
and supplying chips to leading LCD TV brands
Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...
and
Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...
, and later
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and
Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...
. Its revenues increased from $69 million in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2005, to $270 million in fiscal year 2007, when it had net income of $30 million. This success allowed the company to increase its cash reserves to more than $200 million by 2008. After an investigation into accounting irregularities relating to stock options, in November 2006 the company's chairman and CEO resigned, which was followed by the departure of further key personnel, including its president and former vice president of engineering in early 2008. By 2008 as DTV manufacturers started integrating more functionality (such as motion compensation/estimation and MPEG decoding) into a single chip, its fortunes turned and its sales quickly declined to $76 million in fiscal year 2009, for which it posted a loss of $70 million. The primary competitors taking away market share from Trident at the time were
MediaTek MediaTek Inc. () is a Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company that provides chips for wireless communications, high-definition television, handheld mobile devices like smartphones and tablet computers, navigation systems, consumer multimedia ...
, MStar Semiconductor,
Zoran Corporation Zoran Corporation was a multinational digital technology company, founded in 1981 and headquartered in Silicon Valley, that was predominantly focused on designing and selling SoC (System on a Chip) integrated circuits for consumer electronics ...
and in-house chip design at
Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...
and other LCD TV manufacturers, while
ST Microelectronics STMicroelectronics N.V. commonly referred as ST or STMicro is a Dutch multinational corporation and technology company of French-Italian origin headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates near Geneva, Switzerland and listed on the French stock market. ST ...
(who had acquired Genesis) remained a significant player. Under new management, in May 2009 Trident completed the acquisition of selected assets of the frame rate converter (FRC), demodulator and audio product lines from TDK-Micronas. In October 2009 Trident announced a deal with NXP Semiconductors to transfer NXP's TV and
STB State Security ( cs, Státní bezpečnost, sk, Štátna bezpečnosť) or StB / ŠtB, was the secret police force in communist Czechoslovakia from 1945 to its dissolution in 1990. Serving as an intelligence and counter-intelligence agency, it d ...
businesses to Trident, with NXP becoming a significant shareholder. The deal was closed in February 2010. The Micronas and NXP acquisitions involved a substantial and diverse product portfolio and a large number of employees in widely dispersed operations in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and other locations. The acquisitions significantly increased the Trident's revenues to $557 million in 2010 but also greatly worsened its profitability and cash flow, resulting in a loss from operations of $173 million in 2010 and net loss of $129 million. According to unaudited results for 2011, revenues decreased by 46.5% in 2011, resulting in another net loss of $150 million. On January 4, 2012, Trident filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection appointing
Entropic Communications Entropic Communications is a provider of semiconductor products for the connected home. Founded in 2001, the company is headquartered in San Diego, California, USA, and maintains offices worldwide. The fabless semiconductor company invented the ...
as the stalking horse bidder. In February 2012, Entropic announced it would buy Trident's set-top box chip business for $60 million. In June 2012, Cambridge Silicon Radio paid $1M for Trident's audio products. Around the same time
Sigma Designs Sigma Designs was an American public corporation that designed and built high-performance system-on-a-chip semiconductor technologies for Internet-based set-top boxes, DVD players/recorders, high-definition televisions, media processors, digital ...
purchased Trident's remaining TV chip business.


Stock price, stock option practices and litigation

Trident common shares traded on the NASDAQ stock market from its
Initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...
on December 16, 1992 to 2012. The stock split two-for-one on 21 November 2005 and reached a high of $31.07 on 19 April 2006, representing a market capitalization of approximately $1.9 billion. It later declined substantially including a large drop on 26 October 2007. The stock dropped below $3 in September 2008 and it would never close above $3 again. In November 2005, Trident announced that its founding chairman and CEO, who owned 10% or more of the company's shares, had established a pre-arranged trading plan to sell up to 1,250,000 pre-split shares of common stock. In November 2006, Trident announced the resignation of its founder and CEO following an investigation by a special committee into back-dating of stock option grants, and announced that it would restate its financial results for the period 1994 to 2006 to reflect non-cash charges for stock based compensation expense. The
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The primary purpose of the SEC is to enforce the law against market ...
in 2010 announced a settlement with Trident's founder and former CEO and with Trident's former
chief accounting officer The chief financial officer (CFO) is an officer of a company or organization that is assigned the primary responsibility for managing the company's finances, including financial planning, management of financial risks, record-keeping, and financ ...
, relating to a complaint alleging illegal back-dating of stock options in the period from 1993 to 2006. As part of the settlement, the former CEO agreed to be barred for five years from serving as an officer or director of any company registered with the SEC and to pay a $350,000 penalty and a disgorgement (representing the benefit gained from the back-dating of stock options) of $817,500 payable to Trident. In 2011, Trident reached a settlement with its former CEO resulting from a derivative shareholder suit that resulted in payment of $9.4 million to the company.


Graphics chipsets

The following lists are not complete.


Desktop

* TVGA8200LX (1987) * TVGA8800 (1988) - first S/VGA compatible chipset (ISA), 512 KB framebuffer ** TVGA8800BR (512 KB, 128 KB banks only) ** TVGA8800CS (512 KB, 64 KB banks + old/new mode support) * TVGA8900 series - high-color (65,536) display-mode support, 1 MB framebuffer ** TVGA8900B (up to 1 MB) ** TVGA8900C (up to 1 MB, SVGA, ISA) ** TVGA8900CL (up to 2 MB, SVGA, ISA/VLB. Slightly faster than earlier 8900 cards) ** TVGA8900D (up to 2 MB, 8900CL with bugs corrected) ** TVGA8900DR (SVGA, ISA, max 1 MB) * TVGA9000 series - first integrated (VGA + RAMDAC) VGA chipset ** TVGA9000 (low component version) ** TVGA9000B (1992) ** TVGA9000C (1992) - External RAMDAC ** TVGA9000i - (rev. a/b/c, 512 KB, 9000 with on-chip 15/16bit DAC and clock generator) ** TVGA9000i-1 (1994) - appeared on Trident's VC512TM ISA video cards ** TVGA9000i-2 (1994) ** TVGA9100B - Slightly faster 9000 * TVGA 92xx, TVGA 938x, TVGA 94xx - first Windows accelerators ** TVGA9200CXr ** TVGA9380 ** TVGA9385 ** TVGA9388 ** TVGA9400CXi (max 2 MB, True Color, on-chip 24-bit DAC + clock gen) ** TVGA9420DGi (PCI, 9400 w/ 2D acceleration itBLT, ... ** TVGA9430DGi (PCI, 9420 w/ hardware cursor) * TGUI944x series - first performance-competitive Windows 2D-accelerators ** TGUI9440 (1994) - Integrated true-color DAC and clock synthesizer, 1/2 MB PCI/VLB ** TGUI9440AGi (PCI, 9430 w/ 16bit DAC interface + programmable clock) ** TGUI9440-2 (9440-R) - PCI, integrated true-color DAC, clock synthesizer and ROM BIOS ** TGUI9440-3 - PCI/ISA bus, similar to TGUI9440-2. Differently designed Trident logo, rare ** TGUI9460 ** TGUI9470 * TGUI966x - similar to 9440, 64-bit (internal?) datapath ** TGUI9660 ** TGUI9660XGi * TGUI968x - Feature motion video accelerator (zoom + YUV to RGB color space conversion, DirectDraw overlay) and first chips with 64-bit DRAM interface ** TGUI9680 - PCI/VLB, 32/64-bit interface to 1–4 MB FPM/EDO DRAM or WRAM ** TGUI9680-1 - Lower power and improved video quality compared to TGUI9680 ** TGUI9680XGi ** ProVidia 9682 (TGUI9680 with video in and support for Unified Memory Architecture with certain core logic chipsets) ** ProVidia 9683 ** ProVidia 9685 (TV video out, UMA) * 3DImage series - first Windows-3D accelerators (4–8 MB PCI/AGP) ** 3DImage 9750 (64bit, PCI/AGP, TV out) ** 3DImage 9753 ** 3DImage 9753WAVE (9753 + 32 voice wavetable, 0.35ym, 208PQFP) ** 3DImage 9754 ** 3DImage 9750DVD (9750 with DVD decoder) ** 3DImage 9783 ** 3DImage 9785 ** 3DImage 9850 (Faster 9750 core, AGP2X, AGP only) ** 3DImage 985DVD (DVD acceleration) ** 3DImage 9850+ (Faster) * Blade3D (1999) - first performance-competitive Windows 3D-accelerators ** Blade3D 9880 (8 MB PCI/AGP) ** Blade3D Turbo 9880T - 135Mhz clockspeed, up from 110 MHz on the Blade 3D vanilla. ** Blade T16 9950 - Memory; 16MiB at 143 MHz ** Blade T64 9970 - dual-pixel quad-texture engine, AGP4X, 32 MB of memory, 64-bit datapath ** Blade XP 9980 - same as T64 except 128-bit datapath, 200 MHz vs. 166 MHz * XP series (DirectX 8/9) ** XP4 ** XP4E - AGP8x support. ** XP8 (cancelled) - DirectX 9 chip, marketed for under US$100. ** XP10 (cancelled) - PCI Express interface


Mobile ( laptops)

* Cyber 9xxx **Cyber9320 **Cyber9382 **Cyber9385 **Cyber9388A-1 (Fujitsu Lifebook 780Tx) **Cyber9397 and Cyber9397DVD **9525DVD * CyberBlade **CyberBlade Ai1 **CyberBlade e4-128 **CyberBlade i1 **CyberBlade i7 *Blade XP *XP4 **XP4m16/XP4m32 - embedded memory. *XP8 (cancelled) - DirectX 9 chip.


Integrated with motherboard chipset

*ALi CyberALADDiN-T () *ALi CyberALADDiN-P4 (CyberBLADE XP2) *VIA Apollo MVP4 (Blade3D) *? (codename Napa2T) *? (codename Napa2-P4) *? (codename Napa2-Banias)


Sound chipsets

* Trident 4DWAVE-DX/NX, based on the T² platform which is also used by SIS and
ALi ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib ( ar, عَلِيّ بْن أَبِي طَالِب; 600 – 661 CE) was the last of four Rightly Guided Caliphs to rule Islam (r. 656 – 661) immediately after the death of Muhammad, and he was the first Shia Imam ...
for their own audio interfaces. Supports Q3D 2.0.


Digital television chips

The SVP-EX product family (described as Trident's fifth-generation video technology) was introduced in 2004 and ramped to significant volume in 2005 as top-tier OEMs
Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...
and
Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...
widely adopted the chip in their new
LCD TV Liquid-crystal-display televisions (LCD TVs) are television sets that use liquid-crystal displays to produce images. They are, by far, the most widely produced and sold television display type. LCD TVs are thin and light, but have some disadvantag ...
models during a time when LCD TV demand grew significantly. It offered advantages in image quality and chip integration compared to competitive solutions, featuring ten-bit color component precision in ADCs, color decoder, deinterlacer, scaler, color processor (image enhancement) and display interface, and a single unified framebuffer. The SVP-PX (described as featuring Trident's sixth-generation video technology) was the successor of the SVP-EX, featuring an integrated HDMI interface and contributed more than 50% of the company's revenue by Q2 2006. The SVP-LX (with sixth-generation video technology) was Trident's first chip to support
Full HD 1080p (1920×1080 progressively displayed pixels; also known as Full HD or FHD, and BT.709) is a set of HDTV high-definition video modes characterized by 1,920 pixels displayed across the screen horizontally and 1,080 pixels down the screen vert ...
for high-end televisions. The SVP-CX (sixth-generation) was a cost-reduced version of the SVP-PX for lower-end LCD TVs with a resolution up to 1366x768p. It was widely adopted by
Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...
. The SVP-UX and SVP-WX integrated Trident's first-generation motion compensation/motion estimation technology. The HiDTV platform, which had a long development history, was Trident's first generation fully integrated DTV SoC integrating MPEG2 decoding, transport stream demultiplexer, and descrambler with the video processor functionality of earlier products. The HiDTV Pro platform was Trident's second-generation integrated DTV SoC platform, with several variants integrating different Trident video processors. Both HiDTV product lines suffered from delays and slow adoption and it was only after the acquisition of Micronas product lines that it was able to win a significant SoC design win at a major OEM for production in 2010. After the Micronas and
NXP NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NXP) is a Dutch semiconductor designer and manufacturer with headquarters in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The company employs approximately 31,000 people in more than 30 countries. NXP reported revenue of $11.06 billion in 2 ...
acquisitions in 2009, Trident acquired a diverse range of chip products for applications ranging from digital TVs to various types of
set-top box A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of sign ...
, including the FRC (motion-estimation/compensation) chip family from Micronas that was widely used in high-end televisions. At this point Trident possessed a fragmented, overlapping portfolio of products and technology resulting from long-term independent development efforts (stemming from NXP, Micronas and Trident itself), with several architecturally distinct solutions targeting the same application (such as ME/MC chip, DTV video processor and integrated DTV SoC).


References

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External links


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