Introduction

Bitboys and Glaze3D

Bitboys has been in the news lately with two new press releases. First, they've brought on new President and CEO Shane Long, former 3dfx/STB VP of Sales and Marketing and they have also established new US Headquarters in Dallas, Texas.

Second, they've announced their new Xtreme Bandwidth Architecture (XBA). "The revolutionary Xtreme Bandwidth Architecture™ (XBA™) utilizes Infineon Technologies AG's leading embedded memory technology (eDRAM) with 9 MB of extremely high speed memory integrated with the graphics engine and additional external memory to deliver unprecedented bandwidth to 3D graphics. The XBA™ technology has been created as part of company's Glaze3D project."

The Interview

At the end of the XBA announcement, we noticed this eye-catching paragraph: "Bitboys plans to introduce the final product specifications, product names and target prices of the first XBA™ enabled products March 2000. Bitboys is scheduled to begin demonstrating the technology in Q2/2000 and ramping up full volume production of XBA enabled parts during Q3/2000."

It looks like it's time for another interview! We first spoke with Bitboys Chief Graphics Architect Petri Nordlund last year at Siggraph, and now we have a second follow-up interview with Petri and Bitboys' new President and CEO Shane Long. Our questions are in bold, and answers are in normal font.

FS: With the addition of 3dfx/STB Senior VP Shane Long, it looks like Bitboys is finally ready to sell a product. Is there any particular reason why Bitboys chose to set up US operations in Dallas, Texas (or did Shane just not want to move)?

Shane: Hey what's wrong with Dallas? Actually, Dallas is a very good location for our Headquarters. It is centrally located to our principle target markets and customers, has a very good base of technical resources, and also allows us to avoid some of the Valley issues that start-ups have like employee retention, IP leak, and cost of business. I am not ruling out a Valley office for some development work in the future, but for now I am very pleased with the R&D being mainly done in Europe and general management, sales and marketing being in Dallas. Besides, moving sucks.