XGI Technology Inc.

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XGI Technology Inc. ( Chinese  圖 誠 科技 , Pinyin Tú Chéng kējì  - "Sketch / Serious / Technology") was founded in June 2003 by Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) and United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) in Taipei . Until the beginning of 2006, the company's goal was to manufacture high-quality graphics chips for the desktop and notebook market. Since then the focus has been on the server and embedded market.

history

Founding time

To enable entry into the market, the graphics division of SiS, which developed graphics chips such as the SiS Xabre , SiS 300 or SiS 6326, was incorporated into the new company. In addition, the graphics division of Trident Microsystems , which was particularly successful in the early 1990s, was taken over, so that two development teams and two finished designs were available to set up the company.

Volari family

At the end of 2003 , the Volari V8 Duo, the first member of the Volari family , was the first graphics chip from XGI to hit the market. The Volari V8 is a former SiS development that was originally supposed to come onto the market under the name Xabre II. XGI brought the chip to series production. The measure, which was still unusual at the time, of installing two graphics chips on one card using the BitFluent Protocol caused a stir .

In theory, XGI would have had a high-end chip. In practice, however, the Volari V8 Duo disappointed with poor performance, poor driver quality, poor features, and high power consumption and heat development.

In addition to the Duo, there were also the individual variants Volari V8, V5 and V3. The Volari V3, however, was a renamed Trident XP4, had nothing in common with the original SiS chips and was designed more as a notebook chip.

The Volari range was a flop, and XGI was best known for its flowery marketing language and optimistic declaration that it wanted to become a market leader within five years.

Decline

At the end of 2004 and the beginning of 2005 it was rather quiet around XGI, but in November 2005 a new generation of entry-level graphics chips called Volari 8300, which was developed by the former Trident team, was introduced. These models are hardly or not at all available in Germany.

For the beginning of 2006 the Volari 8600 was actually expected, which should be a further development of the Volari V8. After various rumors about the future of XGI, ATI announced on March 6, 2006 that it was taking over the development departments in Shanghai / China and Santa Clara (California) / USA (former Trident team). XGI itself remained and wants to concentrate on the server and embedded area with the remaining company parts in the future.

Marketing disaster

XGI probably hoped for higher synergy effects from the two graphics teams and therefore full-bodied announcement of market leadership within five years when the company was founded. However, the weak results of the Volari chips meant that this provocative announcement was perceived in informed circles as ridiculous and absurd. In addition, XGI had created a mostly very flowery marketing term for every technology, no matter how normal and generally used, which was also not conducive to reputation and credibility.

Open source drivers

XGI started in April 2005 to release the source code of the drivers for their graphics cards under Linux . It all started with the Volari Z7, the server graphics card from XGI, which can only handle 2D. At the end of November 2005, XGI announced that it would disclose the complete driver - including the 3D part - of the Volari 8300. However, this has not yet happened. By disclosing the driver source code, it would be possible to integrate it into X.org and the Linux kernel and thus dispense with a proprietary driver.

Models

  • Volari V8 (duo)
  • Volari V5 (Duo)
  • Volari V3
  • Volari V3XT
  • Volari Z7
  • Volari 8300
  • Volari 8600 (XT)

See also

Web links