Graphics accelerator targets Windows NT

Huntsville, AL--Wildcat 3D graphics technology will let Intergraph bring SGI InfiniteReality(TM)-class performance to the Windows NT desktop at one-tenth the price, according to the company. Intergraph claims the technology delivers 3D graphics performance that is scalable from 5 to 10 times that of current 3D graphics technology.

"Wildcat's massive texture memory capacity, SuperScene anti-aliasing, programmable geometry acceleration, and multi-display support further establish the Intel/Windows NT platform as a powerful option for visual simulation, mechanical CAD, 3D animation, and any other 3D-intensive or real-time application," says Peter Ffoulkes, an industry analyst with Dataquest.

The first, entry-level product based on the Wildcat 3D graphics technology, Intense 3D Wildcat(TM) 4100, achieves a CDRS Viewperf score of 200. This score surpasses the performance of all UNIX- and Windows NT-based 3D graphics offerings, says Intergraph. The card also delivers 6 million triangles/second.

The speedy technology is based on Intergraph's ParaScale(TM) architecture, which allows the power of multiple 3D pipelines to be combined to drive a single display. This means that the task of drawing an image is split between pipelines, with each pipeline processing only a portion of the application's data.

A pipeline consists of a geometry accelerator and a rasterization engine with its own frame-buffer and texture memory. Using multiple pipelines results in linearly scaled performance increases; that is, two pipelines provide twice the performance and four pipelines provide four times the performance of a single pipeline. The Intense 3D Wildcat graphics driver and hardware handle this capability and make it totally transparent to the application and the user. Thus, developers don't have to modify their applications to take advantage of multiple graphics pipelines.

The 4100 will be available in December for $2,995. It will be offered in Intergraph's TDZ 2000 ViZual workstations as well as to Intergraph's OEM work-station customers.