Siggraph/Eurographics

Bitboys?

In May of 1998, during the heyday of the Voodoo2 craze, Bitboys Oy, a small company from Finland, put out a press release about a new 3D accelerator called the Glaze3D. At that time the Voodoo2 was the undisputed king of 3D acceleration. The Voodoo2 could do a whopping 90 million dual-textured pixels per second. No other mainstream 3D card even came close.

Then came the Glaze3D press release: 400 Million dual-textured pixels per second. The announced Glaze3D numbers blew away the Voodoo2, but there was a small problem: the Glaze3D only existed on paper.

Initially, the Glaze3D received a lot of online attention from various hardware and game sites, but interest quickly dwindled when people realized the chip was slated for Q2 1999, a year away and an eternity in the graphics market. Bitboys virtually disappeared. Q2 1999 came and passed, but there was no sign of the Glaze3D.

What happened?

Bitboys originally intended to get a large manufacturer to make the chips or buy the entire design, but they didn't find any takers. Eventually, they decided to build it themselves. Skip forward to Monday, August 2nd. Bitboys releases an updated Glaze3D spec sheet. The new Glaze3D 1200 sports 600 million dual-textured pixels per second, and the 2400 model clocks in with 1200 million dual-textured pixels per second.

Sounds too good to be true doesn't it? A lot of people are calling the Glaze3D vaporware, but we don't think the Glaze3D deserves such a harsh tag just yet. I took a little trip down to Los Angeles yesterday, and sat in on the Siggraph Eurographics Workshop to see Bitboy's Petri Nordlund give a presentation on "The Glaze3D Graphics Processor." I also had the opportunity to speak with him after the workshop ended. Is the Glaze3D legit? Read on and find out.

The Glaze3D F16