designs graphics chipsets for PCs.
S3® was founded and incorporated in January 1989 by
Dado Banatao and Ronald Yara. On March 5, 1993, S3 began an
Initial Public Offering of 2,000,000 shares of
Common Stock on
Nasdaq . After several profitable years as an independent startup company, struggling with the transition to integrated 3D cards, S3 remodeled itself as a consumer electronics company and sold off its core graphics division to a joint venture with
VIA Technologies for $323 million. The joint venture, S3 Graphics, continues to develop and market chipsets based the S3 graphics technology.
The reformed company carried over a substantial cash pile from the profitable TRIO days and a successful investment in
UMC , a
Taiwan ese
Semiconductor Foundry . On November 15, 2000, S3 changed its name to SONICblue and its Nasdaq stock symbol to SBLU. The new business model focused on digital media and information appliance opportunities. ReplayTV, Rio, and GoVideo, were some of the brands developed. On March 21, 2003, SONICblue filed for
Chapter 11 Bankruptcy .
S3 produce graphics cards primarily for PCs. While the earlier products such as the TRIO range were 2D only, later 3D functionality was added with the
ViRGE and then
Savage cards. More recently S3 chipsets have been sold as integrated VIA
North Bridge parts.
- ( 1990 ) - S3's first Windows accelerators (16/256-color, high-color acceleration)
- - 24-bit true-color acceleration
- - mainstream DRAM Windows accelerators (16/256-color, high-color acceleration)
- - 24/32-bit true-color acceleration, DRAM or VRAM
- - S3's first PCI support
- ( 1994 ) - 2nd generation Windows accelerators (64-bit wide framebuffer)
- - S3's first motion video accelerator (zoom and YUV->RGB conversion)
- ( 1995 ) - S3's first integrated (RAMDAC+VGA) accelerator. The 64 bit versions were S3's most successful product range.
- - S3's first Windows 3D-accelerators. Notoriously poor 3D. Sold well to OEMs mainly because of low price and solid 2D-performance.
- ( 1998 ), '''4'''( 1999 ), '''2000''' ( 2000 )- S3's first recognizably modern 3D hardware implementation. Poor yields meant actual clock speeds were 30% below expectations, and buggy drivers. S3 Texture Compression went on to become an industry standard, and the Savage3D's DVD acceleration was market leading at introduction. Savage2000 was announced as the first chip with integrated Transformation and Lighting (S3TL) co-processor.
- - Mobile chipsets
- - Integrated implementations of Savage chipset for VIA motherboards
- - Discrete cards post acquisition by VIA.
- - VGA RAMDAC with high/true-color bypass( SDAC had integrated PLLs, dot-clocks, and hardware Windows cursor)
- - A programmable, sigma-delta audio DAC, featuring an integrated PLL, stereo 16-bit analogue output
- - PCI Audio Accelerator
- - MPEG Decoder
From formation in 1989 it took S3 two years to develop the world's first single-chip
Graphical User Interface (GUI) accelerator. Integrated functionality enabled attractive pricing, and solid features for competitive prices remained a hallmark of S3's strategy.
S3's most notable product range is the S3 TRIO 2D chipset. It remains one of the best selling graphics chipsets of all time. Updated in a number of timely revisions, each time S3 managed to keep the series one step ahead of the competition.
However, TRIO was a 2D range, and by the mid 1990s consumers and OEMs started to demand 3D functionality from graphics cards. Internally, S3 failed to recognise this transition quickly enough, and had to rush out the S3
ViRGE range of 3D cards. While cheap, and popular with some OEMs for this reason, performance and drivers were poor. Some enthusiasts even nicknamed them graphics decelerators.
The integrated modern style 3D feature produced by S3, was the
Savage series of
Graphics Card s. Notably these pioneered
S3TC under the proprietary METAL API interface, subsequently adopted by Microsoft under royalty, as an industry standard for
Texture compression in
DirectX .
Savage also introduced an industry-leading
Motion Compensation engine, a quality video scaler, as well as hardware
Alpha-blended sub-picture blending, a first. However, the 3D performance of the Savage cards was never quite enough to take significant market share. Poor yields meant actual clock speeds were 30% lower than had been projected during development, and the
Transform And Lighting engine implementation was flawed.
It became apparent the excellence of S3's integrated 2D technology, was no longer enough to ensure the overall success of the chipset. While S3 could have continued development of the Savage cards, and most likely resolved the outstanding issues, instead in 2001 the S3 management decided to sell off the core business to VIA for $323 million.
Subsequently, Savage derived chips turned up in numerous VIA motherboard chipsets as an integrated north bridge solution, such as Twister and UniChrome. More recent discrete derivations have carried the brand names DeltaChrome and GammaChrome. In this manner, S3 derived chips have held onto about a 10% share of the overall PC graphics market.
was an American consumer electronics company resulting from the
1999 merger between computer peripheral maker
Diamond Multimedia and graphics chipset maker S3 Incorporated.
In November
2000 , the combined company changed its name to SONICblue and changed its focus from graphics chipsets and computer peripherals to consumer electronics, such as the
Rio line of MP3 players. In January
2001 , the graphics chipset business was sold to a joint venture between SONICblue and
VIA called S3 Graphics. Later that same year, the company bought
ReplayTV , a maker of PVR systems, and Sensory Science Corporation, a company selling dual-deck DVD/VCR systems under the GoVideo brand name.
On
March 21 ,
2003 , SONICblue filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and sold off its main product lines.
On
April 16 , 2003,
D&M Holdings , the parent company of
Denon Ltd. and
Marantz Japan Inc. purchased virtually all operating assets from SONICblue and now produces ReplayTV and Rio units under a new subsidiary, Digital Networks North America (DNNA), Inc. The last piece of the company was effectively sold in late 2003, when Best Data acquired the Diamond's Supra modem business along with rights to the Diamond Multimedia name for use in a new video card division.
