SGS-THOMSON Leads Video Port Standard Effort for PC

December 16, 1996 - SGS-THOMSON Microelectronics today announces the official release of the VIP Standard. Video Interface Port (VIP) is an open non-proprietary interface standard between video devices and the graphics device in a PC. Developed in conjunction with a number of PC industry leaders VIP is poised to become the PC multimedia standard for the new generation of PCs.

Wide industry acceptance was one of the key objectives of VIP. This objective was met as VIP was initiated by SGS-THOMSON, and developed jointly with ATI, C-Cube, Cirrus Logic, LSI Logic, Philips, Trident, and S3.

"We saw the need for an open, low-cost, and technically superior video interface standard for the new PCs that support high quality video-oriented applications," said Chris Lam, Market Development Specialist for SGS-THOMSON Microelectronics. "These applications include DVD, DSS, video capture, VBI/Internet, and video phone, etc."

In addition to wide industry acceptance, the other key advantages of VIP are low pin count and low-cost. VIP consists of two separate ports - an ITU-R-656 video port and a simple but versatile host port. It only takes 13 pins for a typical graphics chip implementation. The low pin count is a welcomed benefit to the graphics chip designers whose designs are increasingly pin-limited. Because of the low pin count, VIP uses the same 26-pin VESA feature connector for active signals, and only adds an additional 14 pin connector for power and other miscellaneous signals. This cuts the cost of a VIP system to a minimum.

"As a broad-line semiconductor company committed to the PC market, VIP offers low-cost, tight-integration solutions across multiple SGS-THOMSON product lines," said Paul Bromley, Manager of PC Corporate Strategic Marketing at SGS-THOMSON. "Some examples are MPEG, 3D Multimedia Accelerators, and x86 Super Integration Products".

"As the world's leading supplier of graphics, video and multimedia accelerators, S3 teamed with SGS-THOMSON and other industry leaders to develop video capabilities for the 1997 PC architecture and beyond," said Mark Farley, Product Marketing Manager for Third Party Video Solutions at S3 Incorporated. "Future S3 products based on the VIP standard will offer our customers the most cost effective method of connecting video devices such as hardware MPEG decoders to the graphics subsystem."

Farley, Product Marketing Manager for Third Party Video Solutions at S3 Incorporated. "Future S3 products based on the VIP standard will offer our customers the most cost effective method of connecting video devices such as hardware MPEG decoders to the graphics subsystem."

"As the rapid convergence of 3D and high-quality video on the mainstream PC continues, VIP will play an important role in bridging the gap between graphics and video systems," said Michael Hara, Director of Marketing for NVidia. "VIP provides our customers with low-cost, flexible and short time-to-market product solutions, perfect for today's fast moving mainstream PC market."

As the MPEG leader in both the consumer and PC markets, SGS-THOMSON also initiated the Video Module Interface (VMI) standard in 1995. VMI has been successful with the support of many graphics and MPEG manufacturers, and it has been submitted to VESA as an industry standard proposal. VIP retains the advantage of the VMI simple separate video/host port architecture, but reduces the pin count significantly. In addition, VIP includes a number of enhanced features. Examples are multiple slaves support, simultaneous MPEG/VBI, plug-and-play, power-down mode, power-up auto configuration, etc.

"Cirrus Logic is a strong proponent of open industry standards and has worked with SGS-THOMSON and other industry leaders in defining both the VMI standard and the VIP specification," said Robert V. Dickinson, president of Cirrus Logic's Graphics Company. "The new VIP specification will allow suppliers of video-enabled devices, including MPEG-2/DVD and cameras, to design products that are portable across different graphics accelerators. This interoperability is key to bringing advanced video applications into the mainstream PC market."

"Philips Semiconductors welcomes the agreement amongst the industry leaders to install VIP as the common standard of image port interface on live-video enabled graphics controllers. We expect that the VIP standard will accelerate the multimedia penetration in the PC market place. We are eager to be first to provide TV-decoder devices with VIP interface to the industry, which ease live video capture applications, e.g. for video phone or video editing, as well as VBI data application, like Intercast and Teletext." said Leo Warmuth, Video Architect for Philips Semiconductors.

SGS-THOMSON Microelectronics is a global independent semiconductor company listed on the New York Stock Exchange and on the Bourse de Paris. It designs, develops, manufactures, and markets a broad range of semiconductor integrated circuits (ICs) and discrete devices used in a wide variety of microelectronic applications, including telecommunications systems, computer systems, consumer products, automotive products, and industrial automation and control systems.

NVIDIA Corporation is a venture-funded, privately-held, fabless semiconductor company with headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. The company designs, markets, sells and supports multimedia chips which concurrently accelerate the key components of multimedia, delivering the ultimate interactive experience on a PC.

VIP-enabled devices will begin to appear in Q1 97. VIP-based systems will start to appear in the market in the second half of 1997. VIP 1.1 specification will be available from SGS-THOMSON's web site - http://www.st.com - early in the new year.

All trademarks and registered trademarks mentioned in this announcement are the sole properties of their respective owner companies.

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