New AGP Graphics Accelerator from ELSA Provides High-Performance 3D Graphics

GLoria-XXL delivers 3.3 million polygons-per-second acceleration with HDTV-quality support

NDES (Booth #6270 & 6926), Chicago, IL. -- March 16, 1998 -- ELSA, Inc. (Santa Clara, CA) today announced the GLoria™-XXL, a new high-end 3D graphics accelerator designed to meet the demanding requirements for CAD modeling, animation, and visualization applications. GLoria-XXL will ship in second quarter of 1998.

Based on the latest GLINT^® GMX 1000 chipset, which includes the GLINT Gamma, from 3Dlabs^®, Inc. (San Jose, CA) (NASDAQ:TDDDF), GLoria-XXL will be capable of accelerating up to 3.3 million polygons-per-second, with full geometry transformation, lighting calculations, texture coordinate generation, and high-quality fog calculation. GLoria-XXL will be configured with a 16 MB VRAM frame buffer and 24 MB DRAM -- expandable to 40 MB -- local buffer memory for Z-buffering and texture-mapping. This latest addition of the award-winning GLoria family also supports high resolution true color display of up to 1920x1080 or 1600x1280 on 24" monitors.

GLoria-XXL uses a 48-bit local buffer interface to enable simultaneous use of 3D features such as front and back buffer, Z-buffer, stencil, fast clear planes, and graphics ID. ELSA GLoria-XXL also supports stereoscopic 3D imaging through a VESA^®-standard connector.

GLoria-XXL will support a wide range of high-performance 3D APIs, including OpenGL^®, HEIDI™, and Direct3D^®. With ELSA's optimized drivers, GLoria-XXL provides an ideal solution for professionals using CAD/CAM/CAE applications such as Pro/ENGINEER^®, AutoCAD^®, AutoDesk^® Mechanical Desktop, EDS/Unigraphics, IDEAS™, MicroStation™ 95, and Softimage^® 3D.

Quotes

"ELSA is excited to continue our long-standing relationship with 3Dlabs and offer graphics professionals the latest generation of 3D accelerator for the PC," said Thomas Neubert, vice president of marketing and sales at ELSA. "GLoria-XXL provides robust 3D performance at a price dramatically lower than traditional UNIX workstations, while enabling customers to fully exploit the power of Windows NT^®."

"ELSA's engineering expertise, particularly in software driver technology, brings its customers an excellent 3D graphics solution," said Neil Trevett, vice president of marketing at 3Dlabs. "We are pleased that ELSA has once again chosen to standardize its high-end graphics offering around 3Dlabs' GLINT technology."

"The GLoria-XXL appears to be an ideal solution for professional animators using 3D Studio MAX," said Phillip Miller, product manager of 3D Studio MAX at Kinetix. "The ELSA OpenGL driver now supports dual planes within MAX R2, delivering an incredible speed increase over traditional OpenGL^® performance."

ELSA Information

ELSA Inc. is a subsidiary of ELSA AG, a stock company based in Aachen, Germany. Founded in 1980, ELSA has built a world-class reputation in high-performance 2D and 3D graphics solutions in addition to a wide ranging ISDN and videoconferencing product family.

The ELSA logo is a registered trademark of ELSA AG. All names mentioned may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.