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Compaq Workstations - Key Technologies
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Features
Technical Specifications
Max Horizontal Scan Rate
281 KHz
Max Pixel clock
230 MHz at 8bpp and
16bpp/5:5:5
135 MHz at 32bpp/8:8:8
Video Features:
Interface
VGA
3D Graphics Features:
Integrated geometry pipeline
setup processor
True-color 3D graphics
Polygon based with Z-buffer
Texture decompression
Full scene anti-aliasing
Enhanced GUI
Acceleration:
Ultra-fast BLT engine and
2D rasterizer
Stretch BLTs,
monochrome/color expansion
and logic ops
Fast on-chip SVGA
Autodesk Display list driver
Heidi drivers support for 3D
Studio Max
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Operating Systems
Windows 95
Windows NT 3.51/4.0
The Diamond Fire GL 4000
Select models of the Compaq Professional Workstation 6000 includes the Diamond Fire GL 4000
graphics controller which delivers high performance 3D graphics capabilities for users working
in demanding, true color environments such as 3D animation, visualization, simulation, and
mechanical CAD.
The Fire GL 4000 uses the Mitsubishi 3DPro chipset based on the REALimage rendering
technology from Evans & Sutherland to deliver a very high level of 3D performance. It provides
hardware acceleration for OpenGL 1.0 (NT 3.51 only), OpenGL 1.1 (NT 4.0 only), and HEIDI
(NT 3.51 and 4.0). Support for Direct3D and HEIDI under Windows 95 will be available at a
later date.
The Fire GL 4000 delivers industry leading 3D graphics performance by combining a
comprehensive set of hardware acceleration features including rasterization, texture mapping
and triangle set-up with the new 3D-RAM and CDRAM memory architectures.
3D-RAM is a new technology used for the Frame buffer and Z-buffer memory on the Fire GL.
This design includes a small arithmetic logic unit in the DRAM that performs a number of the
calculations locally. This improves performance by reducing traffic to and from memory.
The Fire GL uses CDRAM (Cache DRAM) for the texture memory. This technology provides a
small SRAM cache built into the DRAM. This high-speed cache provides a buffer for texture
between the controller and the DRAM memory, which reduces data access times and ultimately,
increase graphics performance.
With all of the Fire GL’s high performance features, it can deliver performance exceeding the
throughput capabilities of the PCI bus. One component of the Highly Parallel System
