Tseng Labs
| Tseng Labs
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| legal form | Corporation |
| founding | 1983 |
| resolution | 1997 |
| Seat | Newtown , Pennsylvania |
| management | Jack Tseng |
| sales | US $ 21.5 million (1988) |
| Branch | Computer, hardware |
Tseng Laboratories Inc. (better known as Tseng Labs Inc. ) was a graphics processor company based in Newtown , Pennsylvania . Founded in 1983 by Jack Tseng, the company operated until 1997.
history
In 1983 Tseng Labs brought out the monochrome display card UltraPAK, based on the graphics chip ET1000. The processors were further developed up to the 128-bit ET6000 (1995). Together with the ET4000, this was one of the best-known VGA chips of the Windows 3.x era between 1991 and 1995 . The ET4000 family was particularly known for its unusually high ( ISA ) throughput , despite the DRAM graphics memory used.
Tseng fell victim to the market shakeout in the graphics card sector in the mid-1990s and lost market share to S3 and ATI . Especially with the integration of a RAMDAC in their products, Tseng could not catch up with the ET6000. In the later years of the ET4000 this developed into a significant competitive disadvantage.
Due to difficulties in obtaining memory (special video random access memory - MDRAM) and a lack of financial means to develop a modern 3D accelerator processor , plans for a next-generation card were discarded. Instead, it should consolidate cash and target a sale. However, this resulted in an attempt at a particularly advanced (multi-processor) solution: The graphics card manufacturer VideoLogic combined the Tseng chip with the powerful PowerVR chip from NEC (and in some cases also a sound chip) on one card . However, this solution was not accepted by the market.
Due to these circumstances, Jack Tseng resigned in September 1997. In December 1997 the rights to most Tseng technologies were bought by ATI , ATI took over the production facility in Newton and 40 employees. Tseng management decided to use the current income and cash reserves to invest in a startup company . In the summer of 1998 the remaining company was merged with the pharmaceutical manufacturer Cell Pathways .
- Examples of graphics cards with well-known Tseng chips
Tseng ET1000 ISA 8 bit
Tseng ET4000 graphics card with ISA connection
Tseng ET4000 / W32p with VLB connection, the graphics memory can be seen on the left third of the graphics card
Graphics card with Tseng ET6000 and 2 MB MDRAM as graphics memory (expandable to 4 MB via two PLCC sockets)
Web links
- Tseng Labs driver for Windows XP and BeOS 5
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c CNN Money of June 5, 1989: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1989/06/05/72064/index.htm (accessed: June 16, 2009)