"If you look at the integrated graphics and core logic products available today, most feature trailing-edge graphics because they use older chips. This allows the companies to amortize the costs over time, and extends the life cycle of the design," said Rick Calle, director of marketing at ArtX (Palo Alto, Calif.). "We are going to turn this marketing approach on its end."

ArtX will bring to the partnership a graphics core featuring transform and lighting capabilities, currently seen as one of the most advanced functions available in the graphics accelerator market. Only a handful of companies offer this technology, none of them in an integrated north-bridge chip.

ArtX burst onto the scene in May, when it was announced the startup would supply the graphics chip for the next-generation Nintendo game set, code-named Dolphin. Calle said the Dolphin product and the Acer device will use different cores.

The chip set, known as the Aladdin 7, will be an Acer product, with a 128-bit graphics bus, a geometry engine and the power to plot 12.5 million triangles per second. It is sampling now and will ramp into volume production next quarter, at $32 in quantities of 10,000.

"Most of the integrated chip sets for the Socket 7 market have older graphics technology, which allows the PC OEMs to offer systems in the $499 range. But when users get them home and try to play some games, they find out the 3-D graphics on those machines are pretty pathetic," said Nancy Hartsoch, chief operating officer for Acer. "This one features a very powerful graphics engine."

Acer is already working with Nvidia Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.) on the Aladdin TNT2, an integrated graphics and core logic chip set that will aim at the Intel-compatible Slot 1/Socket 370 market. The device is now sampling and is due for volume production next month. It is priced at $33.

Although Nvidia's latest product, the GeForce256, offers transform and lighting technology, the Aladdin chip is based on Nvidia's older Riva TNT2 technology, and does not have a geometry engine.

Hartsoch suggested that the next generation of the Slot 1 Aladdin device will likely feature transform and lighting capabilities, although she would not say whether it will use technology from ArtX or Nvidia. ArtX's Calle said his company is currently in negotiations with a chip set vendor to produce a Slot1 product using ArtX graphics technology, but he would not say if it was Acer or a competitor.

S3, Via venture

Meanwhile, chip set vendor Via Technologies and S3 have formalized their relationship by launching a joint-venture entity to be named S3-Via Inc. The two plan to sample this quarter a device based on S3's Savage4 core, another older chip that lacks the cutting-edge transform and light features. The product will likely fall into the same mid-$30s price window. S3's current top-end product, Savage2000, is expected next month; it does offer a geometry engine.

Via is reaching for other markets as well, with the recent acquisitions of two microprocessor vendors: National Semiconductor Corp.'s Cyrix unit and Integrated Device Technology Inc.'s Centaur division.

Rick Bergman, vice president and general manager of S3's mobile and integrated product business unit, said the joint-venture agreement with S3 does not now include plans to add processors to the mix, but he left that window open for potential future developments.

In the meantime, S3-Via will enter the market at about the same time as both of Acer's products, and will face off against several other entries, including Intel's 810 chip set, which is already shipping in volume. What all of these have in common is attractive price points, and with the exception of the ArtX-driven Aladdin 7, they are all powered by previous-generation graphics technology.

"So far, we've only seen ho-hum graphics technology from the competition," said Calle. "We could have offered a cutting-edge discrete part, but we really want to offer powerful graphics in a format that will reach the mainstream consumer."