S3 Graphics, Ltd (commonly referred to as S3) was an American computer graphics company. The company sold the Trio,

ViRGE The S3 ViRGE (Video and Rendering Graphics Engine) graphics chipset was one of the first 2D/ 3D accelerators designed for the mass market. Introduced in 1995 by then graphics powerhouse S3, Inc., the ViRGE was S3's first foray into 3D-graphics. ...

, Savage 3D, and Chrome series of graphics processors. Struggling against competition from

3dfx Interactive 3dfx Interactive was an American technology company headquartered in San Jose, California, founded in 1994, that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics processing units, and later, video cards. It was a pioneer in the field from the l ...

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 ...

and

Nvidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

, it merged with hardware manufacturer Diamond Multimedia in 1999. The resulting company renamed itself to SONICblue Incorporated, and, two years later, the graphics portion was spun off into a new joint effort with

VIA Technologies VIA Technologies Inc. (), is a Taiwanese manufacturer of integrated circuits, mainly motherboard chipsets, CPUs, and memory. It was the world's largest independent manufacturer of motherboard chipsets. As a fabless semiconductor company, VIA ...

. The new company focused on the mobile graphics market. VIA Technologies' stake in S3 Graphics was purchased by

HTC HTC Corporation ( zh, t=宏達國際電子股份有限公司, s=宏达国际电子股份有限公司, p=Hóngdá Guójì Diànzǐ Gǔfèn Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī, first=t) or High Tech Computer Corporation, (literally ''Hongda International Electron ...

in 2011.

History

S3 was founded and incorporated in January 1989 by

Dado Banatao Diosdado P. Banatao (born May 23, 1946) is a Filipino entrepreneur and engineer working in the high-tech industry, credited with having developed the first 10-Mbit Ethernet CMOS with silicon coupler data-link control and transceiver chip, the fir ...

and Ronald Yara. It was named S3 as it was Banatao's third startup company. The company's first products were among the earliest

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, ins ...

(GUI) accelerators. These chips were popular with video card manufacturers, and their followup designs, including the Trio64, made strong inroads with OEMs. S3 took over the high end 2D market just prior to the popularity of 3D accelerators. S3's first 3D accelerator chips, the

series, controlled half of the market early on but could not compete against the high end 3D accelerators from

, and

3Dfx 3dfx Interactive was an American technology company headquartered in San Jose, California, founded in 1994, that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics processing units, and later, video cards. It was a pioneer in the field from the l ...

. In some cases, the chips performed worse than software-based solutions without an accelerator. As S3 lost market share, their offerings competed in the mid-range market. Their next design, the Savage 3D, was released early and suffered from driver issues, but it introduced S3TC, which became an industry standard. S3 bought Number Nine's assets in 1999, then merged with Diamond Multimedia. The resulting company renamed itself SONICblue, refocused on consumer electronics, and sold its graphics business to

. Savage-derived chips were integrated into numerous VIA motherboard chipsets. Subsequent discrete derivations carried the brand names DeltaChrome and GammaChrome. In July 2011,

HTC Corporation HTC Corporation ( zh, t=宏達國際電子股份有限公司, s=宏达国际电子股份有限公司, p=Hóngdá Guójì Diànzǐ Gǔfèn Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī, first=t) or High Tech Computer Corporation, (literally ''Hongda International Electron ...

announced they were buying VIA Technologies' stake in S3 Graphics, thus becoming the majority owner of S3 Graphics. In November, the

United States International Trade Commission The United States International Trade Commission (USITC or I.T.C.) is an agency of the United States federal government that advises the legislative and executive branches on matters of trade. It is an independent, bipartisan entity that analyze ...

ruled against S3 in a patent dispute with Apple.

Graphics controllers

* S3 911, 911A (June 10, 1991) - S3's first

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...

accelerators (16/256-color, high-color acceleration) * S3 924 - 24-bit true-color acceleration * S3 801, 805, 805i - mainstream

DRAM Dynamic random-access memory (dynamic RAM or DRAM) is a type of random-access semiconductor memory that stores each bit of data in a memory cell, usually consisting of a tiny capacitor and a transistor, both typically based on metal-oxid ...

VLB Windows accelerators (16/256-color, high-color acceleration) * S3 928 - 24/32-bit true-color acceleration, DRAM or

VRAM Video random access memory (VRAM) is dedicated computer memory used to store the pixels and other graphics data as a framebuffer to be rendered on a computer monitor. This is often different technology than other computer memory, to facilitate b ...

* S3 805p, 928p - S3's first PCI support * S3 Vision864, Vision964 (1994) - 2nd generation Windows accelerators (64-bit wide

framebuffer A framebuffer (frame buffer, or sometimes framestore) is a portion of random-access memory (RAM) containing a bitmap that drives a video display. It is a memory buffer containing data representing all the pixels in a complete video frame. Mode ...

) * S3 Vision868, Vision968 - S3's first motion video accelerator (zoom and YUV→

RGB The RGB color model is an additive color model in which the red, green and blue primary colors of light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three addi ...

conversion) *

S3 Trio The S3 Trio range were popular video cards for personal computers and were S3's first fully integrated graphics accelerators. As the name implies, three previously separate components were now included in the same ASIC: the graphics core, RAMDAC ...

32, 64, 64V+, 64V2 (1995) - S3's first integrated ( RAMDAC+

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 now ...

) accelerator. The 64 bit versions were S3's most successful product range. *

(no suffix), VX, DX, GX, GX2, Trio3D, Trio3D/2X - S3's first Windows 3D-accelerators. Notoriously poor 3D. Sold well to OEMs mainly because of low price and excellent 2D-performance. * Savage 3D (1998), 4 (1999), 2000 (2000) - S3's first recognizably modern 3D hardware implementation. Poor yields meant actual clock speeds were 30% below expectations, and buggy drivers caused further problems.

S3 Texture Compression S3 Texture Compression (S3TC) (sometimes also called DXTn, DXTC, or BCn) is a group of related lossy texture compression algorithms originally developed by Iourcha et al. of S3 Graphics, Ltd. for use in their Savage 3D computer graphics accelerat ...

went on to become an industry standard, and the Savage3D's DVD acceleration was market leading at introduction. Savage2000 was announced as the first chip with integrated Transformation and Lighting (S3TL) co-processor. * Aurora64V+, S3 ViRGE/MX, SuperSavage, SavageXP - Mobile chipsets * ProSavage, Twister, UniChrome, Chrome 9 - Integrated implementations of Savage chipset for

VIA Via or VIA may refer to the following: Science and technology * MOS Technology 6522, Versatile Interface Adapter * ''Via'' (moth), a genus of moths in the family Noctuidae * Via (electronics), a through-connection * VIA Technologies, a Taiwa ...

motherboards * GammaChrome, DeltaChrome, Chrome 20 series, Chrome 440 series,

Chrome 500 series {{More citations needed, date=September 2022 ''S3 Graphics Chrome 500 series'' is the successor of S3 Graphics Chrome S20 series, and is produced in parallel to the S3 Graphics Chrome 400. Availability The 530 GT is sold from S3's store for a pri ...

- Discrete cards post acquisition by VIA. S3 chrome s27 pciexpress16x card

* S3 GenDAC, SDAC - VGA RAMDAC with high/true-color bypass (SDAC had integrated PLLs, dot-clocks, and hardware Windows cursor)

Media chipsets

* Sonic/AD sound chipset - A programmable, sigma-delta audio DAC, featuring an integrated PLL, stereo 16-bit analogue output * SonicVibes - PCI Audio Accelerator * Scenic/MX2 -

MPEG The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by ISO and IEC that sets standards for media coding, including compression coding of audio, video, graphics, and genomic data; and transmission and f ...

Decoder

References

External links

*
S3.com products cached from 1997

VIA Graphics

Firingsquad: S3: From Virge to Savage 2000

Techreport: A look at S3's DeltaChrome

The Inquirer: S3's DirectX 10 Roadmap
{{Graphics Processing Unit Companies based in Fremont, California Companies established in 1989 Semiconductor companies of the United States Fabless semiconductor companies Graphics hardware companies