SCIENCE

3Dlabs Inc., Ltd., a leading innovator in professional visual processing, today announced that its Wildcat4 technology has been chosen by Sun Microsystems, Inc. to provide the foundation for the newly announced Sun XVR-600 graphics accelerator. The new Sun XVR-600 card is available in mid-range Sun Blade 1500 and high-end 2500 workstations. Powered by Wildcat's graphics technology, Sun XVR-600 graphics deliver high levels of image quality and real-time visualization capabilities for a wide-range of professional applications. 3Dlabs is a wholly owned subsidiary of Creative Technology Ltd. "The Wildcat graphics technology from 3Dlabs is one of the most powerful professional imaging solutions out there," said Shahin Khan, vice president of high performance technical computing at Sun Microsystems, Inc. "The Sun XVR- 600 visualization solution sets itself apart on image quality and is a key part of Sun's Visual Grid platform strategy offering unsurpassed productivity and reduced cost and complexity." Using Wildcat's robust architecture tailored to meet Sun's specifications and requirements, the Sun XVR-600 offers high quality, real-time visualization for mechanical computer-aided design (MCAD), mechanical computer-aided engineering (MCAE), geographic information systems (GIS), and healthcare applications. With double the memory of its predecessor, Sun XVR-600 supports 64 MB of frame buffer memory, 32 MB of dedicated texture memory and 32 MB of DirectBurst(TM) memory for a combined total of 128 MB of onboard memory. Wildcat4 graphics technology enables the new Sun XVR-600 graphics accelerator to achieve up to twice the geometry performance and up to 2.5 times the texture mapping performance of the Sun XVR-500 graphics accelerator. Sun engineers have worked closely with 3Dlabs to fine tune interfaces and drivers to maximize performance with the Sun Solaris(R) Operating Environment. "In the competitive workstation industry, Sun has numerous choices in graphics and they continue to choose 3Dlabs' Wildcat technology because of our outstanding performance and top-notch quality," said Jerry Peterson, executive vice president and general manager of 3Dlabs' workstation division. "We are delighted to further extend our collaboration with Sun to help them deliver this high-caliber graphics solution." The Sun XVR-600 card is also offered in Sun Fire(TM) V440, V480, V880 and Netra 20 servers. In addition, the Sun XVR-1200 high-end graphics accelerator is based on Wildcat4 technology and is available for Sun Blade 2000 and Sun Blade 2500 workstations and Sun Fire 6800 servers. For more information on Sun products, please visit www.sun.com. More information on 3Dlabs' award-winning Wildcat technology can be found at www.3dlabs.com.