SiS Xabre 600, comunicato stampa ufficiale

Dopo la presentazione, nei giorni scorsi, al Comdex del chip Xabre 600, SiS ha diffuso ieri la press-release ufficiale nella quale comunica il lancio di questo nuovo processore grafico a 0.13 micron.

"TAIPEI, TAIWAN, Nov. 26, 2002 - Silicon Integrated Systems Corp. (SiS), a leading supplier of core logic and graphics chipsets, today unveiled the latest generation of its Xabre graphics chipsets, the Xabre600. Built with 0.13-micron process technology, the Xabre600 not only inherits the superb features of Xabre400 to support 8X8 (AGP8X and DirectX8.1), but has become a super graphics engine with complete Pro 8X8 features delivered by a built-in hardware optimized Vertexlizer Engine. It is also the only chipset, among its class, to offer the high speed power of Duo300 with 300MHz clock rate for both engine and memory. Again, Xabre600 proves that it can meet the market demand for high performance display cards, as well as rewrite new standards and specifications for high-end products in mainstream markets

"The Xabre600, built with 0.13-micron process technology, is the best evidence of the leading role played by SiS in graphics chipset research and development." Chris Lin, Vice President, Multimedia Products Division pointed out. "Xabre series allows computer gamers to break through the bottleneck of computer gaming, by enabling the computer systems with the highest transfer rate and frequency, image resolution, system reliability and performance. Featuring both Pro 8X8 and Duo 300MHz, the Xabre600 has increased performance by at least 20% in the 3D Mark 2001 test, as compared to its predecessor, the Xabre400. Using the Xabre600 graphics card, those computer gamers who are particular about combating experience, speed, and image quality will be able to enjoy the unprecedented optimal speed and performance at a very competitive price tag.

This superior product for the mainstream market will be officially available by the end of November 2002. SiS invites a number of display card manufacturers such as Chaintech, C.P. Technology, DFI, ECS, and Triplex to witness the on-site demonstration of its display cards equipped with Xabre family graphics chipsets. The superb performance of Xabre series will be also showcased in combination with applications provided by software developers such as Microsoft and Autodesk. The DirectX 8.1 displays its quality image, superb speed and reliable performance while running the Age of Mythology game created by Microsoft, which has specialized in researching and developing 3D interface technology. By paring the Xabre graphics card with Autodesk's professional 3D Modeling software test suite, the excellent performance of the Xabre OpenGL will exhibit live at the conference. The professional 3D performance of Xabre is demonstrated in full with on-line gaming program, War Craft III and Soldier of Fortune II."

La GPU Xabre 600 sarà dotata di particolari tecnologie, tra le quali:

• Vertexlizer Engine
  
  Tecnologia che va ad aggiungersi alle già note Pixelizer Engine, Frictionless Memory Control( (FMC), Jitter Free Anti-Aliasing e MotionFixing Video. Si tratta, in estrema sintesi, di una particolare architettura hardware ottimizzata per essere in grado di fornire un boost prestazionale per le funzioni di vertex processing utilizzando la potenza di calcolo del processore di sistema.
  
  
• Xmart Technology
  
  La tecnologia Xmart combina tre particolari funzionalità: XmartAGP, XmartVision e XmartDrive. La prima configura in modo autonomo il sistema per ottenere il massimo livello prestazionale posssibile dall'interfaccia AGP, la seconda gestisce la regolazione di colori, luminosità e contrasto nel passaggio da immagini 2D a immagini 3D e viceversa, mentre l'ultima permette di variare la frequenza di core della GPU a seconda della potenza di calcolo richiesta.
  
  
• Xminator-II Unified Driver
  
  Questi driver supportano la tecnologia Xmart spiegata nelle righe sopra, oltre a fornire una serie di pannelli di tweaking caratterizzati da facilità e immediatezza d'uso.

L'intenzione di SiS è di portare questo prodotto "a cavallo" tra il settore mainstream e il settore high-end del mercato, ponendolo come soluzione mid-end più performante tra le attuali proposte dei concorrenti.