E I Du Pont de Nemours & Co’s Du Pont Pixel Systems Ltd in Egham, Surrey, launched Glint, a three-dimensional accelerator graphics chip for Unix and Microsoft Windows NT last week. Glint is targeted at all board and system suppliers involved in the three-dimensional graphics and multimedia markets, the company says. The device is a custom-built processor and incorporates all the rendering, fragment processing and rasterisation operations of OpenGL – the three-dimensional de facto standard for graphics – on a single chip. Three-dimensional functionality includes gouraud shading, bit maps, texture mapping, anti-aliasing, alpha blending and all other modes compliant with OpenGL. The chip also includes two-dimensional acceleration for X Window and Windows NT. According to Du Pont Pixel, in a typical system, the geometry transformations will be done by either a fast processor, such as Intel Corp’s Pentium, or a dedicated local CPU like an 80860. The chip also supports 8, 16 and 24-bit RGb, and 4 and 8-bit colour index frame buffers for displays as large as 1,600 by 1,200 pixels. Du Pont Pixel is currently in negotiation with a number of semiconductor companies to fabricate the CPU, which is being developed using the VHDL model. The firm says it expects to sign contracts with two foundaries, as yet not named, in the US and Japan by the end of the year. Meanwhile Du Pont Pixel is currently setting up two partner pro grammes for Glint licensees. The first vendor partner prog ramme will enable developers to license Glint’s VHDL (the comp uter hardware description lang uage) model to incorporate into their own chip designs. The second tier is for licensees interested in the device’s ASIC libraries for specific vendor implementations. The company says this will enable vendors interested in ASIC technology, particulary from the embedded market, to offer OpenGL as a precompiled library. The VHDL library will be the first product to be offered. Glint pro cessors should sample mid-1994.
