Help me find that Matrox interview !

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

Sorry,

I've been searching the forums for literally one hour and I can't find that interview where a Matrox employee talks about the 256bit bus being discrete buses and having good allocative efficiency. It said that the bandwidth is arbitrated by the controller and then allocated as required.

Can anyone provide a link?

Thanks.

[Tempest]

Maybe http://www.tech-report.com/etc/2002q...a/index.x?pg=2

[TdB]

TR: Does the Parhelia chip have any provisions for memory bandwidth conservation? If so, which techniques are implemented—Z compression, occlusion culling, fast Z clear? I see it has a "depth acceleration unit for advanced Z processing," but I'm looking for more detail.

DW: The Depth Acceleration unit and Depth Cache deals with the Z-buffer and managing access to the Z-buffer in an efficient way. This area includes logic to perform fast Z clears and also sophisticated logic to queue up Z-reads and Z-writes so that they are always done in burst access. And more generally, while Parhelia-512 has a great deal of raw memory bandwidth, it is an intelligent memory controller whose architecture allows granular access of data and also optimizes the access from the intensity, depth, fragment and texture buffers through multiple independent sub-controllers.
The overall architecture of the entire chip is extremely complex with various optimization techniques. Some topline optimizations are the inclusion of fast Z clears and multiple large caches to hide page breaks and to maximize burst efficiency. If you look on the chip block diagram you will see that the depth unit, Fragment AA unit, pixel unit, texture units and the display units all interact with the 512-bit Memory controller array. Each of these sub-units has specific logic to optimize memory efficiency, and the memory controller array itself then arbitrates between all of the different requests sent by these different units. There are multiple independent controllers in this array and they can access different information simultaneously.

edit:
tempest beat me

[jojolimited]

I just read the tech article. Once again matrox comes out with a flawed product. The 10bit color only offers 2bit alpha channel. For gamers this is fine, for those using compositing software, it's useless. You get 8bit alpha if you set the card back to 24bit, but then why buy the thing since everyone else already offers that.
Drat, I guess I'll have to wait awhile longer for NVIDia or ATI to do it right.

[Kosh Naranek]

Originally posted by jojolimited
I just read the tech article. Once again matrox comes out with a flawed product. The 10bit color only offers 2bit alpha channel. For gamers this is fine, for those using compositing software, it's useless. You get 8bit alpha if you set the card back to 24bit, but then why buy the thing since everyone else already offers that.
Drat, I guess I'll have to wait awhile longer for NVIDia or ATI to do it right.

What compositing software is that ???


Since there is no/few 2D apps using 256 level of transparency (alpha channel) then why waste all these colors when you can use them in 3D !

Another thing .... Since 10 bits pr. channel gives 30 bits then how would you do 10 bits pr. channel in 24 bits. ?
(*cough*)


And Gigacolor does not require apps to be made to take advantage of this since it's being applied at framebuffer level,
and it can be turned of if need be.

and finally ... if you want to have the same image quality as on a Matrox card you will have to wait (several years)*2 before nVIDIA
catch up and several years before ATI catch up.

But that's your problem !!!

[jojolimited]

To naranek...
didn't you read the full post? Photo Shop,After Effects, Aura 2, Combustion,Commotion Pro... to name a few. they all support at least 8bit alpha. Aura and AE support 16bit alpha.

I was referring to Video Editors, Compositors and the like, not Gamers. I'm sure the card will be great for gamers but a waste of time for content creators and those editng,compositing videoand/or digital film.
Too bad. I was hoping Matrox would finally break the 8bit per channel limitation those of us in the video/film business have been putting up with. Just have to wait a little longer.

[jojolimited]

to naranek part 2
>>and finally ... if you want to have the same image quality as on a Matrox card you will have to wait (several years)*2 before nVIDIA
catch up and several years before ATI catch up.

<<
ATI caught up with Matrox 2d quality a long time ago. I'm willing to bet both ATI and Nvidia will come out with 16bit per channel color on their cards before 2nd quarter 2003, then Matrox will have to catch up.

It's sad really, I like Matrox and their products and was really looking forward to somone leading the charge. Anything to avoid Nvidas lousy 2d color management, and I mean really lousy. I wouldn't recommend crappy Nvidia to any film/video editor at anyprice. They actually might be better of with SIS or some other low end stuff.

With only 2bit alpha, even game developers will balk at using 10bit color since they rely on alpha for good transparancies.

I know this is a matrox forum, but it doesn't hurt to keep a realistic balanced view point. It will force Matrox to make better products in the long run. You owe it to yourself and your pocketbook to keep manufacturers on their collective toes.

[Rags]

Ya know, ATI's latest products are NOT up to snuff in the 2D arena, Dare I say they are actually worse than the standard GF4 on the market...

Rags

[Novdid]

Yeah, I agree, the old Radeons are better in the 2D department than the new 8500's.

[Dr Mordrid]

Originally posted by jojolimited
To naranek...
didn't you read the full post? Photo Shop,After Effects, Aura 2, Combustion,Commotion Pro... to name a few. they all support at least 8bit alpha. Aura and AE support 16bit alpha.

I was referring to Video Editors, Compositors and the like, not Gamers. I'm sure the card will be great for gamers but a waste of time for content creators and those editng,compositing videoand/or digital film.

Speaking as a video and photo editor who uses Premiere, MediaStudio Pro, Photoshop, PhotoImpact, AE, Boris RED and more, composing a list as long as your arm, I can tell you that NO content creation software I know of works the alpha channel in the display adapter.

In these programs alpha channels are always done in software using compatable filetypes (*.tga w/alpha, SGI RGBA and 32 bit *.avi are examples). The alpha bit depth limitations are internally enforced by the software and the filetype and are not imposed by the display adapter.

If done otherwise there would be a coding nightmare for the creators of those programs akin to the printer driver fiascoes of the '80's. Can you just imagine Adobe, Ulead, Boris etc. having to release a new "Alpha Channel compatability driver" every time NVIDIA, ATI or Matrox released a full revision of their display drivers?
The only possible exceptions I can think of are;

1. the original RT-2000 which used its specialized G400-Flex for doing 3D transitions, filtering and other functions. Even so the RT2K may well not have done its alpha in the G400 but on the codec card. It's follow-on card, the RT-2500, has a special display chip on its codec card so the main display isn't involved at all save for putting it on the VGA.

2. the 3DLabs WildCat III professional CAD card, which has a genlock option. While not strictly an alpha channel it is an overlay layer done in the display adapter.

Only $3500 with the genlock and its specs don't even LIST any internal alpha channel capabilities

As far as 2:10:10:10's effects on 3D, Dan Wood covered that pretty well in the interview.

Dr. Mordrid

[Greebe]

new nick suggestion... jojoDOH!

[Dr Mordrid]

How about jojoBinks?

Don't take this too seriously jojo....a sense of humor and the willingness to be the target once in a while is essential around here.

Consider it a hazing

Dr. Mordrid

[Greebe]

Bwahahahahahahahaa that's perfect Doc! hehe

[Greebe]

How many colors do you see? Can you smell a fart on TV?

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

Thanks heap people, the love is still strong.
That discussion on alpha was great!