SE: The Glaze 3D is said to incorporate a tile based rendering engine, but it is also said to differ from the PowerVR architecture, what similarities are there, and what differences?
Mika Tuomi: The naming is a bit confusing. But to clear things a bit, Glaze3D is traditional triangle based architecture just like 3dfx's and nVidia's. The only difference is in the order of the rendered pixels. We render the triangle as chess board, so that we finish one square at a time and then move on to the next. This is very efficient for texture cache utilization.
SE: With only 9Mb of memory, where does the Z-buffer go?
Mika Toumi: See the first answer.
(Mika Toumi: Here is a list of supported resolutions and how the buffers are arranged between internal and external memory.)
SE: Can you tell us a little more about your Monster quad chip setup which will incorporate your Thor geometry engine, when will it retail, what is the expected price for this setup etc.?
Mika Toumi: I cannot comment on this setup at this time.
Best Regards,
Mika Tuomi
Many thanks to Mika Toumi of Bitboys Oy for answering our Q's with some pretty intriguing A's. You can bet we will be standing in line for the next development.
Read on for the list of features.
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