3Dfx

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3Dfx was a company active in the 1990s that sold low-cost consumer 3D graphics chips for video games for arcade machines and IBM-compatible personal computers.

3Dfx built on the legacy of Evans & Sutherland flight simulators and the work of SGI, using similar algorithms and doing it in a low cost consumer product.

3Dfx was founded in August 1994 by Ross Smith, Scott Sellers, and Gary Tarolli, three former Pellucid employees. The company received funding from Gordon Campbell. It launched its first product in 1996.

3Dfx used TSMC for fabrication of silicon throughout 3Dfx's entire lifespan.

3Dfx's first design was the SST-1 chip, SST being an acronym of the founder's last names: Smith, Sellers, and Tarolli.

Founding

3Dfx was founded with funding from Gordon Campbell, the former founder of Chips and Technologies. For his earlier company and 3Dfs, Campbell used the fabless strategy, where he goes to a country in Asia and gets them to make the chips.

Pellucid was founded as a spin-off from SGI on the basis of taking 3D graphics from the workstation market and getting into the lower cost IBM PC-compatible market for CAD and other professional 3D uses. However, once Pellucid was sold to Media Vision, the president of Media Vision wanted them to focus on 2D Microsoft Windows acceleration only, and not 3D. The founders of 3Dfx left Media Vision because of this.

3Dfx's original business idea was to build computers incorporating new 3D graphics technology for the arcade game market, then refined it the idea to selling only the main logic boards of the computers, then later changed it to only the graphics card. 3Dfx began by developing graphics hardware for JAMMA arcade systems.

Gordon Campbell helped the company receive further rounds of financing from investment bankers.

The initial chip was intended to roughly emulate the performance of an SGI RealityEngine.

Early business

3Dfx spun off its arcade graphics business into a company called Quantum3D.

References

• "3dfx Oral History Panel Transcript". https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2014/05/102746834-05-01-acc.pdf.
• "3dfx Oral History Panel with Ross Smith, Scott Sellers, Gary Tarolli, and Gordon Campbell". 2024-03-06. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MghYhf-GhU.
• Klass, Christian (2019-09-05). "Old interview I once did with Scott Sellers, one of the founders of 3Dfx". https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/old-interview-i-once-did-with-scott-sellers-one-of-the-founders-of-3dfx.428422/.
• "3dfx Voodoo Graphics 4 MB Specs". https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/voodoo-graphics-4-mb.c3570.
• Jansen, Sebastiaan. "list object". https://thandor.net/list_object/list_chipset/1.
• 3dfx Interactive (Documentary / Interview)