the lack of news from M

[SpiralDragon]

hummm.. the silence is deffening......

[UtwigMU]

Well so far we know:
- Matrox is using nSys PCI Express verification tools

"PCI Express is a key technology for our next-generation Graphics offering and we've developed a very sophisticated verification environment to ensure the quality of this new interface," said David Chiappini, ASIC Project Director at Matrox.

- Matrox is using nanoroute from Cadence

"We obtained a NanoRoute Ultra license on a Thursday, immediately installed it into our flow, and scheduled Cadence to come in the following week to help us get going with it," reported David Chiappini, ASIC Director. "However, on the following day, Friday, one of our engineers reviewed the users' manual and decided to give it a try by himself on one of our designs that we had already released as a chip. Over the weekend, with no assistance at all, he wrote a script that succeeded in rerouting the chip using NanoRoute Ultra. As if that weren't impressive enough, the new design ran 20% faster than the old one. We'd made some changes to the design so I can't say for sure the entire performance increase was due to NanoRoute Ultra, but clearly it was a major contributor."

The design was very substantial and quite complicated according to Chiappini. It had approximately 80 million transistors, seven million nets, and 20 clock domains.

- As of this moment there is a plan to release a card that is faster than the Parhelia for professional 3D applications.

- no extra power connector will be required.

- Future half height (the last half height card was G550) cards are possible



They were clearly talking about adding further tweaks to a design that they already released as a chip and by using new tools they were able to route it better. The design had 80M transistors - this would translate to Parhelia.


So what we can expect is a new chip that is based on Parhelia with:
- pci express (AGP version is likely as well, AGP pro is IMO unlikely, except for some niche solution)
- faster clock, but by how much?
- fixes and added support for different resolutions under DVI (P650/750 already have those)
- flip chip packaging

what is possible:
- a dieshrink - it cuts production costs, 80M transistor core takes space on waffers. Also Matrox tended to shrink their cards (G400-G450, there was even a shrunk G250). If they shrunk the core to 130nm and use new routing tools (we heard Parhelia was done using old technology), we can expect clocks between 300 and 350MHz (Radeon 9600XT is 4x1 pipe design on 130nm and is clocked at 500MHz, 150nm R9800XT is clocked at 412MHz). Also Ati and nVidia will introduce mainstream GPUs on 110nm process

Parhelia was fabbed by UMC on 8-layer 150nm process. Currently UMC has 90nm process working since January, however I doubt 90nm dieshrink.

- DX9.0 (VS2.0 and PS2.0) Since Parhelia was already partial DX9

- IMO the chip will still have 4x4 pipeline desing as 8x4 would be too complex and 8x2 or 8x1 would require a radical redesign, which is not likely

- I expect performance to be on R9600/9700 levels, bear in mind, Ati and nV's next gen will be arround by then.


Potentially we can also expect a half height card. With a radical redesign of PCB, it would be possible to fit Parhelia LX GPU on half height card, however a dieshrunk solution that would require less space and power would be better.

WRT to aditions/redesigns of their mainstream line:
- 3D performance is not important in markets where Matrox is present (increase in clockrates or pipelines is not important)
- DX9 feature set is only important for marketing buzz (they went with DX6 cards for quite a while) and being Longhorn compliant - not due till 2006.
- PCI Express will be required, so highly integrated dieshrunk core with PCI Express capabilities on half height card for business desktops and 2D Workstations (meets Tier2 Longhorn requirements) is possible


I overlayed image of P750 on G550 just to show half height card compared to Parhelia LX core:

[Chrono_Wanderer]

which makes me wonder: how hard is it to implement full DX9?

wouldn't that be complicated? you will need to add FP precision... so that means a core redesign....

i doubt they will release a full DX9 part... (and i thought longhorn wants FULL DX9 acceleration.) I personally think it will be 2 more years for Matrox to release a DX9 part (and by then probably DX10)

[SpiralDragon]

hum.... to be honest... i am more intersted in better OGL performance..... here is what i would like to see....

a card that does significantly well on 2d/3d workstations.... say for softimage or maya..... more specificly i would like to see a matrox card suplant the curent fierGL cards used in the Avid DS nitris solutions..... i've seen these systems and still think that matrox image quality is better.... so IMO if they are going after the niche market they ought to do better on OGL..... not just 2D

[UtwigMU]

They did become member of OpenGL ARB

IMO they went a long way from no OpenGL on G200 to OpenGL ARB membership and professional apps certified workstation card now.

With their focus on CAD and other niche markets, OpenGL should be high on their priority list.

[SpiralDragon]

hum... this should boad well then...

[Chrono_Wanderer]

not possible, give the current situation (in my knowledge) of the Matrox Graphics division.... I don't think they have a huge large team...

[UtwigMU]

Well, considering Parhelia is already half way DX9 and that XGI and S3 are shipping DX9 cards, it's not improbable.

[Belwarrior]

is it possible to have triple DVI capability to be added to a single parhelia card?
My idea if it is possible to add the capability to Parhelia, the triple DVI could be easily implemented just a large block on the card and a connecter with three DVI outputs,

wishful thinking as I would be buying LCD monitors and would like to use the DVI interface

[UtwigMU]

The G550 low profile dual DVI and quad DVI cards use single or dual LHF60 connectors which split in dual DVI each and can be converted to DSUB via dongles.

LHF60 + DVI connector could be possible.

But today integrated RAMDACs are much better than external ones, so they would need to integrate 3d 400MHz RAMDAC on the core and add another TDMS (DVI signal transmitter) on PCB.

There is already quad DVI Parhelia (HR256), quad DVI Parhelia-LX (Matrox QID) and quad DVI G450's and G200's MMS.

It's possible, but by what extent and for which market segment (price range).



EDIT: here's how quad DVI PCI card looks:

[UtwigMU]

Another thing I noticed:

When Parhelia came out, it was highly competitive compared to Ti4 and 8500 based Quadros and FireGLS, which all were more expensive (also faster, based on near Parhelia release reviews).

With FX and 9700/9800 based Quadros and FireGLs out, the 9600 and Ti 4 based quadros are now cheaper than Parhelia and Matrox needs a new product for 3D Workstation markets.

[SpiralDragon]

hum... think there willl be a PCI-Express version of parhelia some time in the summer... when all the new intel mobos that suport it are out.... ?