Bitboys Silicon Spotted - A New Player In Town?
Posted by: [PM] on: 08/02/2002 06:38 PM [ Print | 5 comment(s) ] · 31765 views
We have reported on the Bitboys Glaze3D chipset back in December in which a Finnish IT print publication called Micro PC claimed to have information on Bitboys developments. Even back in December Juha Taipale, general manager at Bitboys told Micro PC that they had silicon in production.
Now it seems that Bitboys were showing their hardware - which may even be called Avalanche 3D - at Assembly 2002 a 3D demo scene party in Helsinki Finland. Bitboys is a finish company by the way.
The pictures seem to show one, maybe two different chips from Bitboys. The cards are protected by plastic casings and are not in use. Some cables are indeed connected but the cards were not plugged in an AGP port. There is no heatsink on the chips. From what can be gathered it looks like their are some 7ns SRAM chips on the board. SRAM (static random access memory) is much faster than contemporary DRAM. In addition, its cycle time is much shorter than that of DRAM because it does not need to pause between accesses. Unfortunately, it is also much more expensive to produce than DRAM. Due to its high cost, SRAM is often used only as a memory cache. The board shown seems to be dated 22/2/2002. Make up your own mind about those pictures: Check out full size pics | slow server Read our follow up story with more detailed information about the presentation at Assembly '02
The pictures seem to show one, maybe two different chips from Bitboys. The cards are protected by plastic casings and are not in use. Some cables are indeed connected but the cards were not plugged in an AGP port. There is no heatsink on the chips. From what can be gathered it looks like their are some 7ns SRAM chips on the board. SRAM (static random access memory) is much faster than contemporary DRAM. In addition, its cycle time is much shorter than that of DRAM because it does not need to pause between accesses. Unfortunately, it is also much more expensive to produce than DRAM. Due to its high cost, SRAM is often used only as a memory cache. The board shown seems to be dated 22/2/2002. Make up your own mind about those pictures: Check out full size pics | slow server Read our follow up story with more detailed information about the presentation at Assembly '02
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digitalwanderer Posts: 3 Joined: 2004-02-22 |
#37802 Posted on: 08/02/2002 07:42 PM
OMFG!!! It looks REAL! From Bitboys and it looks REAL!!! Me is very intrigued by the full-fledged real power connector on that card...REAL intrigued. MORE INFO NOW!!!!! (please!) |
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Josh_Hayes Unregistered |
#37803 Posted on: 08/02/2002 09:42 PM
How do you embed a link in a comment? |
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Chicken Unregistered Posts: 279 Joined: 2002-02-11 |
#37804 Posted on: 08/02/2002 11:25 PM
Bitboys? Release *anything* that isnt overhyped??? By the time they get around to mass producing this (if it even exists), nvidia and ati will have cards out with twice the power. |
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TheLostSwede Unregistered |
#37807 Posted on: 08/03/2002 11:21 AM
Well, it's about time isn't it, but the top card seems to be doing something with that little LCD display next to it, a PDA graphics chip ? or a PDA CPU with built in graphics ? but why on an AGP card ? and what is the USB connector for ? Don't know what to say about the second card, but it looks quite similar to a parhelia in certain ways, especially the way the graphics chip is made. It sure looks real enough, but the date on the card is a bit worying. We'll see soon enough I guess. Remember that these are very clever people, we owe enviorment bumpmapping to them among other things.... |
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jsaario Unregistered |
#37811 Posted on: 08/04/2002 11:13 AM
Yes, it's a PDA graphics chip. A huge PDA chip. I don't know reason for AGP-port, but the chip was controlled by a laptop via USB. They ran a demo on that little TFT (yes, TFT) screen. The chip contains an anti-aliasing unit, so the picture was very sharp. They didn't tell anything about chip's voltage or current requirements, so the chip may need very much electrical power. They also didn't tell is that chip going to be integrated to PDA CPU or not. The another card is BitBoys' new PC-graphics card. (No demos or anything, just a card.) How do I know? - I was there, I saw those live. ;-D |
