Matrox has officially launched the Parhelia 512 site and the product itself.
The revolutionary new Matrox Parhelia-512 high-fidelity GPU delivers a new level of visual quality, excellent performance and a wide range of innovative technologies. Parhelia-512 is an 80 million transistor, 0.15ยต, 2D, 3D and DVD/video GPU with a true 256-bit DDR memory interface providing over 20 gigabytes per second (GB/s) of raw memory bandwidth. This AGP device supports unified frame buffers up to 256MB in size and integrates two RAMDACs, a TV encoder and support for dual TMDS transmitters. Designed to surpass the expectations of the most demanding professional users and PC enthusiasts, Parhelia-512 has three major goals: to dramatically increase the quality of all aspects of visualization, to sustain high performance for the most complex and demanding graphics rendering and to deliver a number of innovative and substantive features. "High fidelity refers to a superb reproduction, which is completely true to the original," said Matrox president, Lorne Trottier. "The engineering vision fulfilled by Matrox Parhelia-512 was to achieve the highest-fidelity graphics with the truest representation of color, 3D, text and images created by a single source of incomparable quality, performance and features." Features 10-bit GigaColor Technology: Parhelia-512 delivers the PC industry's first true 10-bit per color channel support for the simultaneous display of over one billion colors. Full 10-bit precision per color channel is maintained throughout the pixel processing pipeline, inside the frame buffers, as well as in the RAMDACs and TV encoder for additional precision in 2D, 3D, DVD and video. 10-bit GigaColor is a forward-looking technology, which provides an exceptionally vibrant Microsoft Windows desktop, the richest graphics, as well as the sharpest 3D images and in-game graphics. UltraSharp Display Output Technology: The display output subsystem of Parhelia-512 is based on a sophisticated new design that delivers truly high fidelity RGB, DVI and TV output. Parhelia-512's dual 400Mhz RAMDACs are fully gamma correctable to 10-bit per channel accuracy. Both RAMDACs, and the integrated TV encoder, output signals with 10-bit per channel signal quality. This technology combined with the most highly developed electronics and filters, delivers the highest-quality analog, digital and TV outputs. 64 Super Sample Texture Filtering: Parhelia-512 integrates the world's most advanced texture filtering units allowing for the dynamic allocation of up to 64 texture samples per clock?double the number available on competing GPUs. These samples can be flexibly allocated to provide higher quality texture filtering with minimal performance impact. For example, the 64 samples could be arranged to deliver dual textured pixels with trilinear filtering, instead of bilinear filtering, at no performance penalty; or dual textured pixels with 16-sample anisotropic filtering at comparable performance to trilinear filtering on competing GPUs. Glyph Antialiasing: Parhelia-512 is the first graphics technology to provide hardware accelerated antialiased text and font rendering with full gamma correction?a feature currently available in Microsoft operating systems but only accelerated in software. Furthermore, Glyph Antialiasing takes the operating system's text quality initiative one step further by offering programmable gamma correction for the antialiasing of text. Glyph Antialiasing makes onscreen text more readable and provides the ultimate desktop viewing experience without compromising performance. 16x Fragment Antialiasing (FAA-16x): This revolutionary approach to antialiasing delivers the highest quality antialiased rendering with minimal performance impact. For applications compatible with FAA-16x, Parhelia-512 intelligently antialiases only pixels on triangle edges and applies a full 16 times super-sampling to those pixels while leaving interior pixels sharp and unblurred. As edge pixels typically make up only a small fraction of the pixels in the scene, Parhelia-512 is able to offer this superior quality with a very small performance penalty. Superior Performance: 512-bit GPU: Parhelia-512 is the first 512-bit GPU and the first device with a true 256-bit wide DDR local memory interface, which can provide over 20 GB/s of raw memory bandwidth. Forming the backbone of the rendering and display engine, the 512-bit architecture and massive memory bandwidth enable Parhelia-512 to sustain the highest performance for the most complex 3D and 2D applications, even during high resolution, multi-display computing. Quad DirectX 9 Vertex Shader Array: Parhelia-512 integrates four Microsoft DirectX 9 compatible vertex shader units into a single vertex processing array. Powered by a sophisticated control unit, with deep instruction and register caches, Parhelia-512 is able to sustain very high performance levels even when executing complex vertex shader programs on high-resolution 3D models. In addition, Parhelia-512 is optimized for OpenGL standard lighting models and handles these at accelerated rates. Quad Texturing: Parhelia-512 is the first GPU to enable single-pass quad texturing with four pixel-per-clock throughput. With the latest generation of 3D games, and a plethora of future games expected to push the limits of texturing beyond dual texturing, Parhelia-512 is the only GPU that provides a rendering platform that sustains performance for cutting-edge graphics applications. 36-Stage Shader Array: With four programmable texture and five programmable pixel shader stages on each of its four pixel pipelines, Parhelia-512's 36-Stage Shader Array boasts the largest and most powerful pixel rendering pipeline to date. The massive shading power of the engine allows Parhelia-512 to render the most demanding next-generation content at high performance levels. Introducing Hardware Displacement Mapping: Hardware Displacement Mapping is a powerful new method of representing and rendering complex 3D geometry using simple data representation. Matrox is the first to develop a hardware implementation of displacement mapping and has contributed elements of this technology for inclusion as a standard feature in Microsoft's DirectX 9 API. Hardware Displacement Mapping works by encoding high-resolution geometric detail into 'displacement maps', which represent height displacements from a low-resolution object mesh, and stores this data in simple texture maps. Using dynamic, depth-adaptive vertex tessellation and mip-mapped vertex texture sampling, Parhelia-512 recombines the base mesh with the displacement map in real time to enable stunningly realistic 3D rendered scenes. Source: Official Parhelia Site Launched
The revolutionary new Matrox Parhelia-512 high-fidelity GPU delivers a new level of visual quality, excellent performance and a wide range of innovative technologies. Parhelia-512 is an 80 million transistor, 0.15ยต, 2D, 3D and DVD/video GPU with a true 256-bit DDR memory interface providing over 20 gigabytes per second (GB/s) of raw memory bandwidth. This AGP device supports unified frame buffers up to 256MB in size and integrates two RAMDACs, a TV encoder and support for dual TMDS transmitters. Designed to surpass the expectations of the most demanding professional users and PC enthusiasts, Parhelia-512 has three major goals: to dramatically increase the quality of all aspects of visualization, to sustain high performance for the most complex and demanding graphics rendering and to deliver a number of innovative and substantive features. "High fidelity refers to a superb reproduction, which is completely true to the original," said Matrox president, Lorne Trottier. "The engineering vision fulfilled by Matrox Parhelia-512 was to achieve the highest-fidelity graphics with the truest representation of color, 3D, text and images created by a single source of incomparable quality, performance and features." Features 10-bit GigaColor Technology: Parhelia-512 delivers the PC industry's first true 10-bit per color channel support for the simultaneous display of over one billion colors. Full 10-bit precision per color channel is maintained throughout the pixel processing pipeline, inside the frame buffers, as well as in the RAMDACs and TV encoder for additional precision in 2D, 3D, DVD and video. 10-bit GigaColor is a forward-looking technology, which provides an exceptionally vibrant Microsoft Windows desktop, the richest graphics, as well as the sharpest 3D images and in-game graphics. UltraSharp Display Output Technology: The display output subsystem of Parhelia-512 is based on a sophisticated new design that delivers truly high fidelity RGB, DVI and TV output. Parhelia-512's dual 400Mhz RAMDACs are fully gamma correctable to 10-bit per channel accuracy. Both RAMDACs, and the integrated TV encoder, output signals with 10-bit per channel signal quality. This technology combined with the most highly developed electronics and filters, delivers the highest-quality analog, digital and TV outputs. 64 Super Sample Texture Filtering: Parhelia-512 integrates the world's most advanced texture filtering units allowing for the dynamic allocation of up to 64 texture samples per clock?double the number available on competing GPUs. These samples can be flexibly allocated to provide higher quality texture filtering with minimal performance impact. For example, the 64 samples could be arranged to deliver dual textured pixels with trilinear filtering, instead of bilinear filtering, at no performance penalty; or dual textured pixels with 16-sample anisotropic filtering at comparable performance to trilinear filtering on competing GPUs. Glyph Antialiasing: Parhelia-512 is the first graphics technology to provide hardware accelerated antialiased text and font rendering with full gamma correction?a feature currently available in Microsoft operating systems but only accelerated in software. Furthermore, Glyph Antialiasing takes the operating system's text quality initiative one step further by offering programmable gamma correction for the antialiasing of text. Glyph Antialiasing makes onscreen text more readable and provides the ultimate desktop viewing experience without compromising performance. 16x Fragment Antialiasing (FAA-16x): This revolutionary approach to antialiasing delivers the highest quality antialiased rendering with minimal performance impact. For applications compatible with FAA-16x, Parhelia-512 intelligently antialiases only pixels on triangle edges and applies a full 16 times super-sampling to those pixels while leaving interior pixels sharp and unblurred. As edge pixels typically make up only a small fraction of the pixels in the scene, Parhelia-512 is able to offer this superior quality with a very small performance penalty. Superior Performance: 512-bit GPU: Parhelia-512 is the first 512-bit GPU and the first device with a true 256-bit wide DDR local memory interface, which can provide over 20 GB/s of raw memory bandwidth. Forming the backbone of the rendering and display engine, the 512-bit architecture and massive memory bandwidth enable Parhelia-512 to sustain the highest performance for the most complex 3D and 2D applications, even during high resolution, multi-display computing. Quad DirectX 9 Vertex Shader Array: Parhelia-512 integrates four Microsoft DirectX 9 compatible vertex shader units into a single vertex processing array. Powered by a sophisticated control unit, with deep instruction and register caches, Parhelia-512 is able to sustain very high performance levels even when executing complex vertex shader programs on high-resolution 3D models. In addition, Parhelia-512 is optimized for OpenGL standard lighting models and handles these at accelerated rates. Quad Texturing: Parhelia-512 is the first GPU to enable single-pass quad texturing with four pixel-per-clock throughput. With the latest generation of 3D games, and a plethora of future games expected to push the limits of texturing beyond dual texturing, Parhelia-512 is the only GPU that provides a rendering platform that sustains performance for cutting-edge graphics applications. 36-Stage Shader Array: With four programmable texture and five programmable pixel shader stages on each of its four pixel pipelines, Parhelia-512's 36-Stage Shader Array boasts the largest and most powerful pixel rendering pipeline to date. The massive shading power of the engine allows Parhelia-512 to render the most demanding next-generation content at high performance levels. Introducing Hardware Displacement Mapping: Hardware Displacement Mapping is a powerful new method of representing and rendering complex 3D geometry using simple data representation. Matrox is the first to develop a hardware implementation of displacement mapping and has contributed elements of this technology for inclusion as a standard feature in Microsoft's DirectX 9 API. Hardware Displacement Mapping works by encoding high-resolution geometric detail into 'displacement maps', which represent height displacements from a low-resolution object mesh, and stores this data in simple texture maps. Using dynamic, depth-adaptive vertex tessellation and mip-mapped vertex texture sampling, Parhelia-512 recombines the base mesh with the displacement map in real time to enable stunningly realistic 3D rendered scenes. Source: Official Parhelia Site Launched
