SiS Xabre400 annunciato

Taipei, April 24, 2002—Silicon Integrated Systems Corporation (SiS), a leading core logic and graphics chip supplier, today unveiled its brand-new graphics chip ­ the Xabre400. The world’s first AGP8X graphics chip and the only one of its class that supports 8x8 (AGP8X and DirectX8.1) functions will no doubt become the new standard for the mainstream market.

“The extraordinary power of the Xabre400 graphics engine will meet market expectations for high-performance display card and prove that SiS has taken the next step. The core and memory of the Xabre400 clock is at 250MHz and 500MHz (DDR), showing that SiS has entered the high-speed GPU club. The name Xabre is derived from ‘sabre,’ a fast, sharp cavalry sword, and expresses the thrill of speed and combat of gaming. We also have a brand-new website (www.xabre.com) to provide service to the extensive network of computer gamers,” says Thomas Tsui, Director of the Multimedia Products Division.

The new AGP8X interface offers the perfect solution to the insufficient bandwidth of AGP4X. Formerly, the 1GHz bandwidth of the AGP4X bus resulted in a data transfer bottleneck as other peripheral devices (i.e. transmission from the north and south bridge to memory or CPU) have bandwidths of 2-4GHz. Now, the Xabre400 provides AGP8X bandwidth of 2.1GHz, eliminating the frustration of insufficient bandwidth. We call this framework “Balance PC”, meaning that data can flow freely in a balanced system that is working at optimal capacity.

Xabre400 also supports the newest DirectX specification ­ 8.1 ­ and is the only graphics chip that provides support for this specification among targeted mainstream market products, enabling it to support the newest DX8 games. The built-in Pixilizer™ Engine handles definition to render the most complicated and most life-like 3D imagery, enhancing the contrast of surface texture and refinement, and drastically improving surface mapping for virtual reality. Xabre400 provides 128-bit DDR memory interface and 128M memory modules, and its proprietary FMC (Frictionless Memory Control™) will revolutionize the long-standing memory access model and amp up the efficiency of memory and bandwidth use.

Proprietary image and color processing technology, such as Jitter-Free Anti-Aliasing, Coloredeemer ™ and MotionFixing™, give Xabre400 an edge on color reproduction and provide life-like color images with higher quality texture detail and color saturation and brightness. It provides the best image quality for 3D games or high-definition DVD images. When paired with the SiS301 line of products, users can enjoy even greater choice of visual entertainment, from Double Scene™ dual display to TV or digital LCD output.

A number of graphics card and motherboard companies already plan to use the Xabre400 graphics chip to give their customers products with the best cost/performance. Shipments are expected to begin in the latter half of May.