CyberVisionPPC - A high-end graphic card for the Cyberstorm PPC / Blizzard 2604 Power Board

The CyberVisionPPC is a high-performance graphic card which can be installed on the expansion slot of the PowerPC604e-based PowerUp accelerators, the Cyberstorm PPC and the Blizzard 2604 Power Board. It is scheduled for delivery in the second quarter of 1998, and will become available simultaneously with the Blizzard 2604 Power Board. Especially for the Blizzard 2604 the use of the CyberVisionPPC is highly recommended as the slow access to the ECS chip memory or Zorro-II-based graphics boards in the A1500/A2000 may limit the system performance in applications with lots of graphic output. The performance of the CyberVisionPPC benefits from the high data bandwidth achieved by the use of the direct connection to the processor bus by use of the graphics direct connector which incredibly speeds up for example 3D rendering and display.

Not only the ultra-fast access of the processor into the video memory, but also the internal speed and functionality of the CyberVisionPPC will provide a breathtaking performance. The CyberVisionPPC is equipped with the powerful PERMEDIA2 graphics controller, which provides an outstanding 3D performance of up to 80 million textured 3D pixels per second, with hardware-accelerated rendering functions such as z-buffering, gouraud-shading, fogging, blending and anti-aliasing. As the design of the PERMEDIA2 hardware suits perfectly for OpenGL implementations, it's 3D performance can support the CyberGL functionality of CyberGraphX V3 Native which comes along with the PowerUp boards. In combination with the high floating-point performance of the PowerPC604e processor a breathtaking performance in professional 3D applications can be achieved by this implementation. Additionally, the PERMEDIA2 processor supports functions like color space conversion, chroma keying and XY-scaling which will be used by the software MPEG decoding routines of CyberGraphX V3 Native.

Memory on the CyberVisionPPC is 64 bit wide SGRAM with data throuput upto 800MB per second which results on use of the ultra fast RAMDAC in the possibility to display upto 1280x1024 in true color at 85 Hz screen refresh rate and 1600x1200 in true color at 60 Hz or high color at 85 Hz. The board will be delivered with 4 MB or 8 MB display memory.