Interview
with : Quantum 3D, Kevin Payne- Director of marketing
Remember these folks? Back in the day they had the most happening board around
the Obsidian. If you had this thing you were a god amongst men, no one else
did it but Quantum3d did the first ever SLI with two Voodoo graphics chipsets
(not Voodoo2s). Then when the Voodoo2 came out they decided to continue with
their strategy and put two Voodoo2s on one board giving you one big board
but one extra PCI slot. This card cost a large amount of pocket change and
was mainly used for arcade and simulations. Being a spin-off of 3dfx itself
it benefited from all of their products and having special privileges with
their technology.Then suddenly they drifted off the retail map. This was because
of two reasons, their products were prohibitively expensive and that they
did not release any new technology to retail markets after the Obsidian X-24
(single card SLI). Instead they concentrated on with their business selling
unique 3dfx products for arcade systems and simulatior, this along with a
slew of modifications they made to the Voodoo2 architecture (like adding more
than two chipsets, which is called the Mercury).
Do you have any plan's for 3dfx's new chip?
Since 3dfx has not made any announcements about a new chip, we cannot comment.
Why did you not follow Alienware's lead with some sort of stepsister technology
for the Voodoo3? And why have you stuck with the Voodoo2 still by just adding
more of them?
I'm not familiar with Alienware but stay tuned for our future board announcements.
However, do keep in mind that newer doesn't always mean it is the best thing
for a particular market. The Mercury system, for example uses 4 Voodoo2-based
Obsidian2 cards to create anti-aliasing, not just gain speed. So the effect
is not to just add more power but to create an additional feature/benefit.
Mercury provides full-scene sub-pixel anti-aliasing at a fraction of the cost
that it takes SGI to do it, for example. That's why we bundled four Obsidian2
boards together.
Obsidian2 will have descendents but keep in mind that Voodoo3 has different
strengths compared to Voodoo2 so there are some applications that Voodoo2
may still be better at and others that Voodoo3 may be better at.
What is going on with Quantum3d's R&D anything new coming out?
Reference the Graphite announcement. We will also be announcing some additional
new technology in the next week or so. Based on the above, you can draw some
conclusions perhaps. Anything beyond what has been currently been announced
requires a non-disclosure agreement.
Will any new products feature support for DirectX7?
Yes we will support DirectX7, albeit only on Windows 95/98. Note that DirectX7
does not run on WindowsNT and will not until Windows2000. This has been a
big restriction to customers wanting multichannel and/or Mercury (our anti-aliasing
system) that needs to run on WindowsNT.
And, no, Quantum3D is not adding special features for DirectX7.
Will you introduce any advanced rendering technology such as T&L or
t-buffer Technology?
The 3Dfx T-buffer is based on licensed technology from Quantum3D Mercury.
In fact, 3dfx is using (2) Mercury computers in their R&D, and also used
a Q3D Mercury computer at the T-buffer paper presentation at SIGGRAPH '99
We are taking advantage of all the 3dfx technology, plus Q3D has exclusive
access to features that the consumers will not see. Examples of this include
the ability to combine more chips together and use large memory for bigger
pixel fill rates, anti-aliasing performance, and huge textured 3D worlds.
What future do you see for small manufacturers in such an increasingly
competitive market?
We're actually doing quite well in this regard. Our business model allows
us to utilize the R&D of companies like Intel, Microsoft, 3dfx and others
to reduce development time/costs while delivering a solid, industry-standard
PC that provides unique value-added features for our markets. We believe that
we have a solid one to two year lead over anyone else in our market space
in this regards. In addition, we utilize ISO 9002 certified manufacturers
that can scale production up/down to meet demand while eliminating our need
to carry inventory. This is another business model advantage.
Another way of looking at this question would be that existing manufacturers
in the visual simulation market are burdened with vertical integration costs
(chip design, chassis design, software design, OS design, manufacturing, etc.)
and that the increasing price competitiveness of these markets is making this
business model prohibitive.
Would you describe your efforts to write Linux, Beos, or Mac drivers for
your specialized hardware?
We've announced plans to support Linux on our system level products later
this year. Like any other OS, this means testing it with our systems, boards,
drivers, etc. which is time consuming. I don't expect that the Linux stuff
requires any particularly fancy testing just the normal stuff to make sure
it is solid when it ships. We're not doing board-level drivers for Linux.
Some of those appear on the web but, since we're not in the consumer market
anymore, it doesn't really involve us.
As for BEos and Mac...no interest from our markets in these products. Our
Visual Simulation/Training (VST) market wants reliability, scalability and
uses Windows, NT and Linux. Our Out-of-Home Entertainment customers want CHEAP
so they are interested in Windows, Linux, embedded OSs for use in arcade games,
simulator games, etc. In that market, price is the main factor.
Keep in mind that most of our systems are used for dedicated applications.
The customers don't actually deal with the OS, only the application. They
could care less if their is a user interface or not for the most part.
When will we next hear from Quantum3d as the desktop powerhouse as we did
with the first obsidian and the x-24? What will it be for?
If by "desktop powerhouse" (thank you) you mean products for
retail sale and use in home PCs, we are no longer in that market. 3dfx is
responsible for selling Voodoo-based products into this market.
The consumer graphics card business is VERY cutthroat business - margin-wise.
3dfx, Nvidea and a few others have made it extremely price-competitive. Our
"value-add" is in system design and deployment. It is difficult
to get a decent ROI when the products in consumer graphics get obsoleted so
quickly. Unless you can sell millions of boards quickly, you get creamed.
Plus to have to have the corporate infrastructure to support retail sales/inventory
management. Tricky stuff for a small company to compete against established
players in a market like that.
We signed an agreement with 3dfx that gave us exclusive rights to their products
in our markets and, in return, we got out of retail, which we didn't want
to be in anyway.
Have you considered using the AMD Athlon in your systems?
Turns out the AMD chip is architecturally different from Pentium III in how
it processes floating point instructions and also how it uses bus architectures.
It is possible that, because of this, it might be faster but it might also
be slower depending on the application.
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