Trident Microsystems

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Trident Microsystems, Inc.

logo
legal form Corporation
founding 1987
resolution 2012
Reason for dissolution insolvency
Seat Santa Clara , United StatesUnited StatesUnited States 
Branch Semiconductor industry

SVGA graphics card with Trident TVGA9000 chip and 512 KB graphics memory.
AGP graphics card with Trident BladeXP

Trident Microsystems was a manufacturer of display processors for flat screens such as TFTs or plasma screens . Until mid- 2003 , Trident was also a provider of graphics chips for PCs . Trident Microsystems was founded in 1987, from 1992 to 2012 the shares were traded on the NASDAQ with the symbol "TRID".

history

In the late 1980s, Trident and Oak Technology became known for cheap, relatively slow graphics chips. The TVGA-8900C in particular was used in many PCs at the time.

In the mid-1990s, Trident was even able to catch up with the then market leader S3 Inc. with the TVGA-9680 , but lost the connection again with the advent of the 3D graphics chips.

Trident developed several 3D accelerators with the Blade 3D, Blade XP or XP 4, but the products were always significantly slower than those of the competition and were therefore rarely used by graphics card manufacturers.

There have also been a few attempts to integrate the graphics cores into mainboard chipsets, the best known is likely to be the VIA MVP4, but these attempts have only met with moderate success.

It looked a little different in the notebook market. Since 3D acceleration only became popular there much later, Trident was able to achieve some successes with graphics chips with embedded DRAM . However, they later lost touch in this market too.

Due to this bad market situation, Trident announced a restructuring in 2003 and as a result the graphics division was sold to XGI Technology in mid-2003 .

In 2009 Trident took over three product lines from the "Consumer Division" from Micronas , as well as from NXP Semiconductors the areas "Digital TV" and " Set-top box ".

In January 2012, Trident filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US .

Graphics chips

Trident TGUI9680
Desktop
  • 8800 : ( 1988 ) - the first SVGA chip from Trident ( ISA ) with 512 KB of memory.
  • 8900 : High color support, 1 MB memory.
  • 9000 : Single-chip solution for low-cost graphics cards.
  • 92xx, 94xx : The first Windows Accelerator from Trident.
  • 9440 : ( 1994 ) - for the first time the performance was on par with the competition (2 MB memory, PCI / VLB ).
  • 9660 : similar to 9440 but with 64-bit.
  • 9680, 9682, 9685 : Multimedia accelerator for video playback.
  • 3DImage975, 3DImage985 : ( 1997 ) - The first 3D accelerators from Trident (4 MB memory, PCI / AGP).
  • Blade3D : ( 1999 ) - The next generation of 3D accelerators. Was u. a. integrated in the VIA MVP4 (8 MB memory, PCI / AGP).
  • Blade XP
  • XP4 : Last 3D chip from Trident. Never really hit the market but was later sold by XGI as the Volari V3 and Volari XP5 .
Notebook
  • 93xx
  • 9525DVD
  • CyberBlade

Web links

Commons : Trident  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Trident purchases three product lines from Micronas. heise online, April 4, 2009, accessed on February 26, 2013 .
  2. ↑ NXP to divest the Digital TV and Set-Top Box divisions. Elektronik Praxis, October 5, 2009, accessed February 26, 2013 .
  3. ↑ Trident bankruptcy does not affect Micronas. Swiss It Reseller, January 6, 2012, accessed February 26, 2013 .