Massively parallel 3D chip to power graphics card

PixelFusion Ltd. and Number Nine Visual Technology Corp. will join to exploit PixelFusion's massively parallel FUZION 150 chip to design a high-end 3D graphics accelerator card for AGP Pro-equipped PCs.

The new 3D accelerator is touted to be the first graphics add-in card to incorporate Rambus RDRAM memory.

The companies claim that simulation tests show the architecture will shatter existing ProCDRS-02 benchmark scores, more than doubling the scores of today's most advanced high-end, proprietary 3D workstations.

PixelFusion's FUZION 150 is a 70 million-transistor, 0.25 micron chip with 24Mb of embedded DRAM. The jointly developed PixelFusion/Number Nine accelerator board will incorporate from 128MB to 1GB of local, on-board memory that will be used for image-store, frame buffers, display lists, multiple textures and other pertinent graphics data. Delivery is scheduled for the first half of 2000. Pricing is not yet available. PixelFusion's web site is at www.pixelfusion.com . Number Nine's is at www.nine.com .