Bitboys.. soon?

[Lucid]

There was a short article on Bitboys in the latest Finnish MikroPC magazine.. It said they are now in silicon stage.. I lost the mag, so perhaps someone else can translate the text and post it here?

[The PIT]

Bitboys err Hahahahahahaha.

They Matrox soon very fast.

[Guru]

Re: Bitboys.. soon?

Originally posted by Lucid
There was a short article on Bitboys in the latest Finnish MikroPC magazine.. It said they are now in silicon stage.. I lost the mag, so perhaps someone else can translate the text and post it here?

I can do it but not before Sunday/Monday! (Have the mag at work)

Oh and I'll send you an Finnish version Greebe so you can translate it yourself so no need to look in here for the translated version ok!

[Hati]

See this thread over at beyond3d:

http://bbs.pcstats.com/beyond3d/messageview.cfm?catid=3&threadid=1689

I guess it's the article you mentioned.

Hati

[Gurm]

Dammit, someone else beat me to the translation. But let me give it a shot anyway:

Limits of the modern silicon process are being tested in gfx chip development.

But not by BitBoys.

Noormarkku based Bitboys was plannig to introduce PC-display adapters based on companys own graphics technology a year ago in Comdex.

And the year before that. And the year before that. And there were a few failed games (failed because they couldn't deliver on schedule), etc. The last thing that BitBoys _did_ do (to completion) was make a way-cool demo for Assembly '94.

Instead they gave up the whole silicon implementation of chip, called Glaze3D at the time.

The one before it was called Glaze3D too, and they gave that one up too. Hmm... sense a pattern?

A new, further developed design is in the silicon process at the moment. Also a follower to this chip is being designed.

Again, I'm sure they are - just not at BitBoys.

Chip under manufacturing has increased embedded memory, leading to the total size of 12 MB. Also the internal bus has been doubled to the width of 1024 bits.

Hmm, let's just double the numbers of the previous guesstimates (aka fake numbers) from last year's board (aka vapourware) and publish 'em!

"I know we have been shallow in our comments, but I can reveal that chip design is complete and chip is being manufactured", says Juha Taipale, general manager.

Translation: "We haven't said squat because someone told us to put up or shut up... and since we had nothing to put up..."

One aspect making the chip design harder was difference between embedded ram and logic. Embedded ram benefits from large capasitance (sp?) of the chips silicon, when on the other hand, it's vice versa with the logic. Large capacitance allows the use of small size memory cells, but same time increases the size chips area used for logic operations.

Translation: "These things are so damn small that they're hard to see. Have you ever tried working with a pixel? I mean DAMN they're tiny! And they keep getting SMALLER! That makes them harder to program - honest!"

"In a sense, our graphics process is as hard to manufacture as state of art main cpu's.", comments ASIC-designer Harri Syrjä.

Translation: "In a sense, we have no product."

- Gurm

[Hati]

Bitboys - never ending story?

I do understand people who don't believe Bitboys will ever deliver working silicon. But if they really will send out some Avalanche cards for reviews I guess they just had bad luck with Infineon stopping the project.
So lets see if the review samples appear and if they do - what their technology would have been worth.
Hati

[Helevitia]

Limits of the modern silicon process are being tested in gfx chip development. Noormarkku based Bitboys was plannig to introduce PC-display adapters based on companys own graphics technology a year ago in Comdex. Instead they gave up the whole silicon implementation of chip, called Glaze3D at the time. A new, further developed design is in the silicon process at the moment. Also a follower to this chip is being designed. Chip under manufacturing has increased embedded memory, leading to the total size of 12 MB. Also the internal bus has been doubled to the width of 1024 bits. "I know we have been shallow in our comments, but I can reveal that chip design is complete and chip is being manufactured", says Juha Taipale, general manager.

[Wombat]

Limits of the modern silicon process are being tested in gfx chip development.

In other news, limits of gravity are being tested by falling apples. Oh, and I like chocolate. I wish I had been a business major, and gotten paid to write vacuous fluff like this.


I sure hope they don't mean 12MB on ths same die as the GPU? The translation is a little unclear, but that seems to be implied. Yield's gonna suck on that.

1024 bit bus? Christ. My best (but still potshot) guess is maybe 256-bit at QDR, or DDR running at 2x core speed. You don't just double a bus. "Uhh, the chip's almost done, but let's double the number of signals here." It's more feasible that they doubled the data rate somehow. Still not optimal, but whatever.

[The PIT]

Anyway the whole idea is mute as they'll never deliver.

[CHHAS]

I'm not really sure who my money would be on to deliver a competitive 3D product first, Bitboys or Matrox, in either case I won't believe anything until I see it.

[Indiana]

Originally posted by CHHAS
I'm not really sure who my money would be on to deliver a competitive 3D product first, Bitboys or Matrox, in either case I won't believe anything until I see it.

We might even see new hardware from Amiga before we will see anything from BitBoys... (that is - NEVER)

[Nuno]

Glaze3D also made it into silicon and we all know where it ended.

I also agree that 12Mb RAM on die will result in very poor yelds. If adding transistors like crazy on die was that simple and cost effective, would you think that flagship cpu´s will still have 256K L2?

[Wombat]

Uhh, flagship CPUs don't have 256kB. Take the HP PA-8700 2.25MB of 1-clock-access L1.
Then again, the UltraSparc III doesn't have very much. But it's all architecture choices.

The chips on my RAM DIMMs are 16MB each, but that's all they are is RAM, and are produced in very high volume. Simple logic, and easily replaced if they fail tests.

[Gurm]

Oh c'mon - they shipped sample TriTech Pyramid3D boards, I even had one. That went nowhere fast, just like everything else these guys have made.

- Gurm

[Novdid]

We all understood he ment flagship CPU's for home use.