Rendition, Inc.

Rendition, Inc. was an American semiconductor company that designed 3D computer graphics chipsets during the mid-to-late 1990s. It is best remembered for its Vérité family of graphics processors, including the Vérité V1000 and the later Vérité V2x00 series, and for being one of the first 3D chipset makers to work directly with id Software's John Carmack to produce a hardware-accelerated version of Quake, known as vQuake. At its peak, Rendition's principal competitor in the consumer 3D accelerator market was 3Dfx. Rendition's chips were notable for their RISC-based, programmable architecture. The Vérité V1000, released in 1996, was among the first PC graphics chips to use a programmable core for rendering 3D graphics, and it integrated 2D/VGA functionality on the same board—unlike 3Dfx's Voodoo Graphics, which was a 3D-only add-in card. This made the V1000 one of the few single-board solutions capable of both 2D desktop acceleration and acceptable 3D gaming performance at the time. The chip supported up to 4 MB of EDO DRAM on a 64-bit bus and included an IBM VGA-compatible display controller. Rendition developed its own proprietary rendering APIs: Speedy3D for DOS and RRedline for Windows. These APIs were used by a handful of games, but the rapid evolution of industry standards such as Microsoft's Direct3D and OpenGL, combined with the V1000's performance limitations, limited their long-term adoption. The V1000 was sold by several board partners, including Creative Labs (3D Blaster PCI), Sierra (Screamin' 3D), Canopus (Total 3D), and Intergraph (Reactor, later Intense 3D 100). Despite early momentum and a design win with vQuake, Rendition struggled against 3Dfx's Voodoo Graphics, which offered higher fill rates and became the preferred accelerator for high-end 3D gaming. The Vérité's 3D engine lacked the fill rate to fully exploit its hardware triangle setup, and its 2D performance in legacy VGA modes was poor. Rendition's later Vérité V2x00 chipsets attempted to address some of these shortcomings, but the company ultimately ceased operations as the 3D graphics market consolidated around a few dominant players. Rendition's legacy includes its early bet on programmable GPU architecture and its role in demonstrating the potential of hardware-accelerated 3D gaming.

Rendition, Inc. was founded in the United States and became active in the 3D graphics chipset market during the mid-1990s. The company's first major product, the Vérité V1000, was released in 1996. It was notable for its RISC-based architecture and was the first PC graphics card to utilize a programmable core to render 3D graphics. The V1000 was both faster and more advanced in features than competitors such as the Matrox Millennium, ATI Rage, and S3 ViRGE. Only 3Dfx's Voodoo Graphics was faster, but unlike the Voodoo, the V1000 included 2D/VGA capability, making it the only acceptably fast single-board solution for 3D games at the time. The Vérité supported a local framebuffer of up to 4 MB EDO DRAM on a 64-bit bus, and contained an IBM VGA-compatible display controller, serving as a traditional 2D/GUI accelerator for Windows. Its first claim to fame was being the only accelerator supported by Quake. Rendition worked directly with id Software's John Carmack to create vQuake, a hardware-accelerated version of the game. However, in the book Masters of Doom, Carmack cited bad experiences with programming the Vérité as the reason for id's shift away from proprietary APIs toward the industry-standard OpenGL. The V1000 was fairly popular when launched. At least four companies sold Vérité boards: the Creative Labs 3D Blaster PCI, the Sierra Screamin' 3D, the Canopus Total 3D, and the Intergraph Reactor (later renamed Intense 3D 100). A handful of software titles shipped with V1000 support. As the ATI Rage, S3 ViRGE, and Matrox Mystique delivered 3D graphics of questionable benefit, id Software's vQuake and Eidos's Tomb Raider were influential in fueling consumer interest in 3D rendering hardware. The Vérité (and Voodoo) ports added 16-bit color rendering, bilinear filtering, per-polygon MIP mapping, and edge anti-aliasing to the game's 3D visuals. Released in time for Christmas 1996, both vQuake and Tomb Raider demonstrated the V1000's 3D hardware to be both faster and better-looking than software rendering on even the most powerful host CPU. An interesting piece of V1000's technology was its use of bus master DMA transfers for data transfer across the PCI bus. This allowed the board to transfer data much more efficiently than with the alternative FIFO mode of the bus. Unfortunately, the immaturity of the PCI bus at the time, and the limited use of bus mastering in general in systems of the day, caused DMA bugs to surface with Vérité. If a motherboard chipset wasn't capable of DMA, Vérité was forced to operate in FIFO mode and performance dropped dramatically. Additionally, on some motherboards, DMA support was incomplete or improperly implemented and speed was quite poor. Both of these issues combined to cause frequent problems for owners of the V1000. Rendition had a DMA test utility to benchmark a motherboard's support of DMA transfers. Some DOS games with Speedy3D Vérité support, such as IndyCar Racing II, offered a mode using DMA and a mode using FIFO, in order to bypass these issues. The Vérité performed triangle setup in hardware. Rendition frequently touted its setup engine as an advantage against 3Dfx's Voodoo Graphics, because hardware setup reduced the host CPU's processing requirements for drawing complex 3D scenes. Unfortunately, the Vérité's 3D engine lacked the necessary fill rate to capitalize on this advantage; the V1000's pixel fill rate was, at best, roughly 25 Mpixels/second (little more than half that of the Voodoo Graphics). Design limitations prevented V1000 from sustaining that level in many games (e.g. when the software uses z-buffering). While the Voodoo did become the accelerator of choice for high-budget 3D gamers, the V1000's triangle setup and integrated 2D/VGA core attracted many gamers looking to upgrade on a modest budget. Outside of 3D games, V1000's 2D performance was subpar in almost every way. In regular MCGA/VGA resolution or "Mode X", the V1000's performance was embarrassingly slow; older MS-DOS games (such as Doom) ran at near slideshow speeds, even on a top-of-the-line host CPU (Pentium 166 MHz). Rendition introduced "renutil", an MS-DOS utility, to address performance in MCGA graphics mode. The utility redirected MCGA (VGA-compatible) display mode setup to an equivalent VESA display mode, bypassing the Vérité's slow VGA core. The utility worked with all MCGA games, but was completely incompatible with games using "Mode X" VGA display mode, which could not be emulated using the VESA mode. Within Windows 95, the V1000 was passable, scoring neither top nor bottom in ZDnet's benchmark suite. In VESA VBE 2.0 display mode, Vérité's speed was outstanding, comparable to other top-rated cards of the era (such as the Matrox and ARK Logic PCI VGA chipsets). While Rendition had tried to craft the V1000 to support many application programming interfaces (APIs), these APIs were in their infancy at the time. For example, Microsoft's Direct3D standard was in rapid development with major changes occurring. V1000 was not optimized for this new Direct3D standard. However, this was more the fault of the API because Direct3D, at the time, lacked support for DMA transfers. The design of V1000, with its RISC core, was one of programmability. Because the GPU was not "hardwired" as ASICs are, the chip could potentially adapt to newer or differing standards than it was initially designed for. Performance limitations, however, inevitably dictated that the chip was not able to grow significantly. OpenGL support, for example, was very limited on V1000. Rendition later developed the Vérité V2x00 series, but the company ultimately ceased operations as the 3D graphics market consolidated. Its proprietary APIs, Speedy3D for DOS and RRedline for Windows, did not achieve widespread adoption. Rendition's major competitor at the time was 3Dfx.

• Release of the Vérité V1000 chipset, notable for its RISC-based architecture and programmable core.

• vQuake and Tomb Raider released in time for Christmas 1996, demonstrating V1000's 3D hardware.

• Development of the Vérité V2x00 series.

Maker of high-performance 3D graphics chipsets for PC gaming and desktop graphics, emphasizing programmable architecture and integrated 2D/3D single-board solutions.

• Vérité V1000

  Released in 1996, a 3D graphics chipset with RISC-based architecture, programmable core, integrated 2D/VGA, and support for up to 4 MB EDO DRAM on a 64-bit bus.

• Vérité V2x00

  Later series of 3D graphics chipsets from Rendition.

• Speedy3D

  Proprietary rendering API for DOS.

• RRedline

  Proprietary rendering API for Windows.

1. 1Rendition, Inc. - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
2. 2Rendition - Wikidatawikidata.org