Bitboys
Bitboys Oy was a Finnish company based in Noormarkku, which dealt with the development of 3D graphics chips for PCs and mobile area ( PDAs, mobile phones, etc.). The company was founded in 1991 and employed since some members of Future Crew. On 2 May 2006, the company was acquired by ATI for 44 million U.S. dollars and to form the nucleus of a new European development center for mobile chips.
Initially developed Bitboys 3D graphics chips for the PC sector, but for various reasons did not reach the production stage. After these failures, the focus in 2000 on the mobile space, but no product was brought to series production there. Because of the many product announcements, and cancellations Bitboys is an epitome of vaporware.
Company History
Pyramid3D
First project of Bitboys Oy was the 3D chip Pyramid3D, which was developed in 1996 for the Singapore-based company TriTech. The chip was very advanced for its time and should far surpass both in performance and in the functions of the former leader 3dfx and its Voodoo Graphics. So had the Pyramid3D already programmable geometry and pixel units, which were until years later integrated as pixel and vertex shaders of other firms in their chips. Although there was already working prototypes of the graphics chip and corresponding graphics card, the chip did not come on the market since TriTech found no takers for chips and later went bankrupt.
First Glaze3D
The first version of Glaze3D was announced May 15, 1998 for the end of 1999 and should be a graphics chip, which should be as relevant competitors are considerably more powerful. Wanted to achieve this mainly through the use of Rambus memory with a multi-channel memory interface. The programming capability of Pyramid3D but was lost. Due to continuing delays in the development and launch of the NVIDIA GeForce in autumn 1999, it was decided at Bitboys not to bring the chip on the market, and instead offer a revised version.
Second Glaze3D
This second version was announced in October 1999 for the first half of 2000. The number of rendering pipelines was doubled and revised the memory interface. In addition, the chip should be capable of multi-GPU to compensate so certain performance disadvantages (see 3dfx VSA -100). The plan of Glaze3D 1200 were with a graphics chip that Glaze3D 2400 with two graphics chips and the Glaze3D 4800 with four graphics chips. In addition, it should still give the programmable geometry chip Thor, the Glaze3D the T & L capability (and presumably beyond) should give. When memory interface wanted to explore new avenues with the use of eDRAM and described the whole thing as Xtreme Bandwidth Architecture ( XBA ). But the second version of the Glaze3D was never finished, the dates were repeatedly postponed and due to name disputes Glaze3D the name was dropped.
Avalanche
Under the new name of the Avalanche again revised Glaze3D in 2001 was known and planned for early in 2002. In addition to the usual improvements ( memory interface ) this time was also the support of pixel and vertex shader according DirectX 8.1 integrated. And unlike the previous Glaze3D chips this time there was even the end of 2001 executable prototypes. Nevertheless, the chip did not come on the market as a manufacturing partner Infineon announced the end of 2001 to phase out the lossy eDRAM production. And since the Company that manufacture dominated as the only, Bitboys had no manufacturing partners and the Avalanche was also dropped.
Mobile chips
After these failures is then announced to the concentration in the mobile sector and thus the development of 3D chips for PDAs, mobile phones and similar devices. Although you could win a licensee for some designs with NEC, but also was not a finished product on the market.