Diamond Multimedia
Diamond Multimedia was a part listed on the NASDAQ under DIMD company with headquarters in Chatsworth, California, which produced mainly in the 90s of the 20th century graphics cards and modems for the PC market by built semiconductors from other manufacturers on printed circuit boards and to appropriate base driver further developed.
Known products, among other things based on the Riva semiconductors NVIDIA Viper video card and the graphics card with 3D acceleration called Monster based on the Voodoo 3dfx chipsets. Furthermore, there was the sound card Monster Sound and Sonic Impact in the program.
Was supplemented its product portfolio through a wider choice of modems under the brand names Supra and the video frame grabber cards ChrunchIt and DTV that were available, among others, in a bundle with Supra -Video Phone Kit.
To professional developers, the FireGL graphics cards that came with the acquisition of Spea Software, Starnberg into the program and were equipped, among others, with a Permedia chipset in the version of 3Dlabs oriented. Based on these brand name SCSI controller named FirePort was realized, the s was in versions up to 40 MB / available and also on semiconductors of another company, namely Symbios based.
With the brand name Diamond Rio began to open up the market for portable MP3 player as a pioneer.
Diamond Multimedia was given the fierce competitive struggle in the wake of the Asian crisis rarely post profits in the quarterly reports and merged in 1999 with the semiconductor manufacturer S3. Built in 2000, renamed in Sonic Blue company shifted primarily to the production of consumer electronics such as MP3 players (Rio series). For the development of the FireGL series, use was temporarily graphics chips from IBM workstation rail, made in addition to Windows drivers and Linux drivers and driver for HPUX available before this part of the company from ATI (now AMD) adopted, on was their semiconductor series converted and transferred after a few years through location - at least in name resolution in the core centers of this group in North America. In March 2003, Sonic Blue filed for bankruptcy.
The former Rio Division was sold and now operates as a Digital Networks North America ( dnna ) under the umbrella of the Japanese D & M Holding. It has its product range to include hi-fi equipment. The market share is due to the strong competition in the MP3 player industry and the DVD player market, however, rather small.
The rights to the brand Diamond Multimedia was sold after the bankruptcy of Sonic Blue to the company Best Data.