Creative hopes that quadrupling texture compression technology extends 3Dlabs' lead in performance graphics memory management.
From VIA‘s press release:
S3 Graphics Co., Ltd, a leading supplier to the 3D graphics accelerator market, today announced the licensing of its patented and proprietary S3TC texture compression technology to Creative Technology Ltd. for implementation in next-generation workstation graphics accelerators.
S3TC technology allows complex textures such as those in today’s 3D gaming applications to be compressed by a factor of four, effectively quadrupling the amount of texture imagery that can be stored and processed with onboard graphics memory, while maintaining crisp visual quality.
“Creative realizes the valuable advantage and potential S3TC technology can provide next-generation workstation graphics accelerators,” said Steve Mosher, vice president at Creative. “By licensing S3TC software, we can enable future iterations of products to process memory intensive images more precisely.”
“With this licensing agreement, Creative and S3 Graphics can work together to demonstrate the technical excellence of S3TC and drive continued 3D momentum,” said Dr. Gerry Liu, Vice President of Marketing for S3 Graphics.
