Out in Front: November 9, 1995

OEM suppliers to the computer and peripheral market have entered the annual pre-Comdex feeding frenzy with a plethora of new multimedia and data-storage products. Announcements range from video-enabled graphics accelerators to a 2˝-in., 1.2-Gbyte drive.

Leading the way on the storage front is Hewlett-Packard with an 8.7-Gbyte, 3˝-in. disk drive, a 24-Gbyte digital-audio-tape (DAT) drive, and new minicartridge tape drives that use Travan media to store 8 Gbytes. The C3653A disk drive spins at 7200 rpm, sustains data transfers at 6.3 to 8.9 Mbytes/sec, and should sell for $1500 to $1700 when volume shipments commence in the first quarter of 1996. HP expects to ship the C1537A DAT drive in the first half of ’96 for less than $1000 (OEM) and the HP Colorado T4000 in the first quarter for approximately $400 (end user).

Hewlett-Packard Co, Palo Alto, CA. (800) 826-4111.

HP Colorado Memory Systems, Loveland, CO. (800) 810-0133.

At the miniature end of the spectrum, Intégral Peripherals announced a 510-Mbyte, 1.8-in. drive in a PCMCIA Type III format and a 2.5-in., 12.7-mm-high, 1.2-Gbyte drive. Both drives leverage the company’s dynamic head-loading scheme to eliminate head slap and allow the products to offer 750g nonoperating shock resistance. The Platinum/1200 will be available for sampling in the first quarter of ’96 at an evaluation price of $895, and the Viper 8510PA will be available for sampling in the second quarter of ’96 at an evaluation price of $695.

Intégral Peripherals, Boulder, CO. (303) 449-8009.

In the graphics and multimedia area, Brooktree announced both hardware and software enhancements to the BtV MediaStream multimedia accelerator chip set. The company now offers a complete set of drivers for Microsoft’s DirectDraw, DirectVideo, DirectSound, DirectInput, and DirectPlay application-programming interfaces for Windows 95. The company has augmented the chip set with the BtV2110 digital game-port interface, and the complete chip set is available for sampling at a price of $75. In other third-party links, Brooktree announced software that enhances the wavelet-based Indeo codec that Intel announced in September. Brooktree has also demonstrated the BtV chip set tightly integrated with a Rockwell modem IC operating in a multiplayer, telegaming application.

Brooktree Corp, San Diego, CA. (619) 452-7580.

ATI Technologies, meanwhile, announced its entry into the video-enabled multimedia-accelerator market with the ATI-264VT IC. The accelerator offers 2-D graphics performance similar to that of the company’s Mach64 family and adds fully interpolative scaling along both the x and y axis of video frames as well as hardware color-space conversion. The IC includes a 24-bit RAMDAC with color correction and an enhanced version of the VESA Media Channel that can carry audio, video, and control information bidirectionally.

The ATI-264VT works with standard extended-data-out DRAM or can leverage synchronous DRAM or synchronous graphics RAM to further boost graphics performance. The company will ship the IC in the first quarter of ’96 at a price of $33 (10,000). Although the ATI-264VT includes a planar-to-packed-format converter that simplifies the playback of software-decoded MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group) streams, ATI also announced a companion MPEG-decoder IC. The ATI-MM900 costs $40 (5000). The company also plans to offer board-level products based on these ICs.

ATI Technologies, Thornhill, ON, Canada. (905) 882-2600.

The jury is still out on how to best move video around a PC, however, and Oak Technology in its latest 64-bit graphics/video accelerator introduced PCI bus mastering. The OTI-64111 includes an integrated RAMDAC, a 64-bit graphics engine, and video scaling and color-space conversion. The PCI bus-mater capability provides a high-speed highway that the accelerator can use to access external subsystems, such as MPEG decoders, audio controllers, and memory. The company plans to ship the chip this quarter at a price of $26 (1000).

Oak Technology, Sunnyvale, CA. (408) 737-0888.

—by Maury Wright