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  • new chip manufacturer

    Hsinchu, Taiwan, and Montreal, Canada, May 16, 2002 — Matrox Graphics Inc., the leading professional graphics company, and UMC (NYSE: UMC), a world leading semiconductor company, today announced their collaboration on the new Matrox Parhelia™-512 graphics chip.

    A high-fidelity GPU, Parhelia-512 uses UMC's 8-layer 150nm (0.15um) process technology, which allows for reasonable power dissipation and a manageable die size. Bringing a new level of visual quality, excellent performance and a wide range of innovative new technologies to market, this AGP 4X device supports frame buffers of up to 256MB in size and integrates two 400 MHz RAMDACs, a TV encoder and support for dual TMDS transmitters.

    "The constant introduction of evermore sophisticated graphics programs is placing great demand on today's graphics chips to innovate", said Dr. Fu Tai Liou, Chief Officer of worldwide sales and marketing, UMC. "We are pleased to be able to help Matrox deliver Parhelia-512, a highly competitive graphics solution, within their critical market windows."

    "We chose to base Parhelia-512 on an 8-layer 150nm (0.15um) process technology in order to achieve high routing density," said Ed Dwyer, Executive Vice President, Matrox Graphics Inc. "We are pleased to be working with UMC because of their ability to quickly ramp up production and reach a high yield of an extremely complex design."

    About UMC
    UMC (NYSE: UMC, TSE: 2303) is a world-leading semiconductor foundry that manufactures advanced process ICs for applications spanning every major sector of the semiconductor industry. UMC delivers the cutting-edge foundry technologies that enable sophisticated system-on-chip (SOC) designs, including 130nm (0.13um) copper/low k, embedded DRAM, and mixed signal/RFCMOS. In addition, UMC is a leader in 300mm manufacturing with three strategically located 300mm fabs to serve our global customer base: Fab 12A in Taiwan, UMCi in Singapore (completion in early 2002), and AU Pte. Ltd., a joint venture facility with AMD that is also located in Singapore (production in 2005). UMC employs over 8,500 people worldwide and has offices in Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Europe, and the United States. UMC can be found on the web at http://www.umc.com.
    UMC delivers the cutting-edge foundry technologies that enable sophisticated system-on-chip (SOC) designs, including 130nm (0.13um) copper/low k, embedded DRAM, and mixed signal/RFCMOS.
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  • #2
    So does that mean that we'll see Parhelia being produced in 130nm copper soon?
    <TABLE BGCOLOR=Red><TR><TD><Font-weight="+1"><font COLOR=Black>The world just changed, Sep. 11, 2001</font></Font-weight></TR></TD></TABLE>

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    • #3
      "We are pleased to be working with UMC because of their ability to quickly ramp up production and reach a high yield of an extremely complex design."
      so this means we will get parhelia soonTM.

      including 130nm (0.13um) copper/low k, embedded DRAM, and mixed signal/RFCMOS.
      EDRAM, hmmm...
      This sig is a shameless atempt to make my post look bigger.

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      • #4
        whats this about AGP 4X, I though the spec sheet said AGP 3.0 (8X).

        Not that I realy care, just like seeing consistant specs.

        Ali

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        • #5
          There's been a lot of conflicting information from Haig, UMC, and various previewers as far as 4x vs. 8x support. I think we have to wait for the product announcement to see what the boards will support.
          <TABLE BGCOLOR=Red><TR><TD><Font-weight="+1"><font COLOR=Black>The world just changed, Sep. 11, 2001</font></Font-weight></TR></TD></TABLE>

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          • #6
            With 128MB on board I would be too worried about 4x/8x AGP speeds. With 20Gb/s internal bandwidth, we wouldn't really want to use the AGP bus for textures would we?

            Agreed with the consistency issue tho!
            Cheers, Reckless

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            • #7
              it's amazing that anyone even worries about the AGP spec anymore.

              One of the most accurate quotes I've seen describes the AGP spec as "...a solution in search of a problem"

              It's a fallback hardware solution. It's not a bad idea, it's just that, today, graphics cards have more onboard RAM than is necessary in most cases, and as we all know, the fastest RAM available to the graphics engine is the local on-board variety.

              AGP is an old spec, it's interesting, and can be used as a fallback on systems without a lot (say,16 MB or more, depending on application needs) of video RAM.

              It should be obvious by now that huge amounts of onboard DDR RAM show the AGP spec as redundant and outdated, although not totally useless.

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              • #8
                more than anything the major problem with using AGP texturing is the fact that it reduces performance on your brand new GeForce 8500 MAX or whatever and drops it down to the levels of no more than a TNT2 M64...

                as far as being redundant, i'm not sure if i would say that... depends on how developers choose to write their games... it enabled Intel to produce a low cost graphics chip that worked suprisingly well (for the time) and perform decently and only had like 2-4mb of memory on it, in the day of 16mb video cards...

                look at the Code Creatures demo - on a 64mb card you are basically testing the ability for your card to use AGP texturing, but on a 128mb card you get performance several factors higher... granted, i didn't see anything in there that would warrent the huge textures... but... anyways...



                my major worries about the AGP 4x/8x thing is that they start shipping cards that are not AGP 8x (like they did with the G400's). Granted, both VIA and SiS have showed reference boards that have AGP 8x compatability, and Intel is rumored to have a chipset out SoonTM.

                suppose we will have to wait for the board press releases to find out for certain...
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                • #9
                  I'm expecting Parhelia to be like the G400 series in that respect too, since there are no AGP8x chipsets available yet (for testing or for customer use). I bought one of the first G400Max's available (by preorder through the Matrox Online Store, of course), and it only supports AGP2x, but was compatible with future 4x motherboards. Later G400's fully supported AGP4x.

                  So watch for Parhelia's to be 4x capable, 8x compatible for the time being, until some 8x chipset motherboards come out. At that point, I'd look to see Parhelia cards supporting 8x reaching the market.

                  (As has been said, the 2x vs. 4x thing was largely a moot point, with most cards, and 4x vs. 8x will likely be the same way.)
                  "..so much for subtlety.."

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                  • #10
                    Re: new chip manufacturer

                    Hmm...I wonder if I will get to see the manufacturing of the Parhelia first hand...(I'll be working in this particular plant. )

                    Originally posted by Captain Marvel
                    .....
                    In addition, UMC is a leader in 300mm manufacturing with three strategically located 300mm fabs to serve our global customer base: Fab 12A in Taiwan, UMCi in Singapore (completion in early 2002),...
                    [/B]

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                    • #11
                      Don't be misled by this news.
                      UMC is involved in the process, but they don't do everything
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                      • #12
                        This goes in well with what I have been hearing about the NV30 and R300 being based on the .13 process.
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                        • #13
                          We'll see. 130nm isn't ready, and I suspect that if they do indeed decide to go to 130, they'll be in for lots of problems.
                          Gigabyte P35-DS3L with a Q6600, 2GB Kingston HyperX (after *3* bad pairs of Crucial Ballistix 1066), Galaxy 8800GT 512MB, SB X-Fi, some drives, and a Dell 2005fpw. Running WinXP.

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                          • #14
                            Originally posted by newguy
                            it's amazing that anyone even worries about the AGP spec anymore.

                            One of the most accurate quotes I've seen describes the AGP spec as "...a solution in search of a problem"

                            It's a fallback hardware solution. It's not a bad idea, it's just that, today, graphics cards have more onboard RAM than is necessary in most cases, and as we all know, the fastest RAM available to the graphics engine is the local on-board variety.

                            AGP is an old spec, it's interesting, and can be used as a fallback on systems without a lot (say,16 MB or more, depending on application needs) of video RAM.

                            It should be obvious by now that huge amounts of onboard DDR RAM show the AGP spec as redundant and outdated, although not totally useless.
                            AGP is very, very important now a days, but not for texturing. Take a PCI version of any newer video card and start comparing it with the AGP version. The AGP version is faster, not from texture uploads, but from geometry transfers. AGP8x is NEEDED if you want games with more polygons and more detail. It gets harder and harder to keep these render monsters fed polys. I just want a PCI-X version of the P-512 to go with a new AMD Hammer board.

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                            • #15
                              That's where higher order surface techniques like TruForm or the much more advanced displacement mapping are supposed to jump in.
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