Matrox is a
CanadianCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
company based in
Dorval, QuebecDorval is a city on the Island of Montreal in southwestern Quebec, Canada. As of the 2006 Canadian Census, the population increased by 2.2% to 18,088. Although the city has the largest surface area in the West Island, it is among the least densely populated...
, which produces video card components and equipment for
personal computerA personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator...
s. It was founded by
Lorne TrottierLorne M. Trottier, CM is a co-founder of Matrox, a computer corporation that specializes in computer graphics.Born in Montreal, Quebec, Trottier graduated from Baron Byng High School and thereafter received a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical Engineering in 1970 and a Masters of Engineering in...
and
Branko MatićBranko Matić Ph.D EE is the chairman, president, co-owner and co-founder of Matrox....
. The "ma" from Matić and "tro" from Trottier, combined with an "x" for excellence, forms the Matrox name.
Matrox is the umbrella name for two legal entities:
Matrox Graphics Inc., the entity most recognized by the public, who has been designing graphics cards for over 30 years; the other entity is
Matrox Electronic Systems Ltd., a company comprised of two divisions:
Imaging—designing frame grabbers hardware and software—and
Digital Video Solutions—providing video editing products for broadcast and video professional markets.
Matrox Graphics specializes in professional multi-display video cards that enable more than one monitor to be driven by a single card.
Matrox is a
CanadianCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
company based in
Dorval, QuebecDorval is a city on the Island of Montreal in southwestern Quebec, Canada. As of the 2006 Canadian Census, the population increased by 2.2% to 18,088. Although the city has the largest surface area in the West Island, it is among the least densely populated...
, which produces video card components and equipment for
personal computerA personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator...
s. It was founded by
Lorne TrottierLorne M. Trottier, CM is a co-founder of Matrox, a computer corporation that specializes in computer graphics.Born in Montreal, Quebec, Trottier graduated from Baron Byng High School and thereafter received a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical Engineering in 1970 and a Masters of Engineering in...
and
Branko MatićBranko Matić Ph.D EE is the chairman, president, co-owner and co-founder of Matrox....
. The "ma" from Matić and "tro" from Trottier, combined with an "x" for excellence, forms the Matrox name.
Matrox is the umbrella name for two legal entities:
Matrox Graphics Inc., the entity most recognized by the public, who has been designing graphics cards for over 30 years; the other entity is
Matrox Electronic Systems Ltd., a company comprised of two divisions:
Imaging—designing frame grabbers hardware and software—and
Digital Video Solutions—providing video editing products for broadcast and video professional markets.
Matrox Graphics specializes in professional multi-display video cards that enable more than one monitor to be driven by a single card. The targeted user-base for Matrox video cards largely consists of 2D, 3D, video, scientific, medical, military and financial workstation users.
History
Matrox's first graphics card product was the
ALT-256 for
S-100 busThe S-100 bus, IEEE696-1983 , was an early computer bus designed in 1974 as a part of the Altair 8800, generally considered today to be the first personal computer . The S-100 bus was the first industry standard bus for the microcomputer industry...
computers, released in 1978. The ALT-256 produced a 256 by 256 pixel monochrome display by "racing the beam"; having the host CPU set registers on the fly to produce bit patterns as the screen was being drawn (see
Atari 2600The Atari 2600 is a video game console released in October 1977. It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in...
for details). This mode of operation meant the ALT-256 required no frame buffer. An expanded version followed, the ALT-512, both available for Intel SBC bus machines as well. Through the 1980s, Matrox's cards followed changes in the hardware side of the market, to
MultibusMultibus is a computer bus standard used in industrial systems. It was developed by Intel Corporation and was adopted as the IEEE 796 bus.The Multibus specification was important because it was a robust, well-thought out industry standard with a relatively large form factor so complex devices could...
and then the variety of PC standards.
During the 1990s, Matrox's "Millennium" line of video cards were noted for their exceptional 2D speed and visual quality. They had a wide following among users willing to pay for a higher quality and sharper display. In 1994 they introduced the Matrox Impression, an add-on card that worked in conjunction with a Millennium card to provide 3D acceleration. The Impression was aimed primarily at the
CADComputer-aided design is the use of computer technology for the design of objects, real or virtual. CAD often involves more than just shapes...
market and failed to make much of an impression on the rapidly emerging 3D gaming market. A later version of the Millennium included features similar to the Impression, but lagged behind emerging vendors like 3dfx Interactive.
Matrox made several attempts to regain a foothold in the market that was increasingly dominated by 3D-capable cards. The
Matrox MystiqueThe Mystique and Mystique 220 are 2D, 3D, and video accelerator cards for personal computers designed by Matrox, using the VGA connector. The original Mystique was released in 1996, with the slightly upgraded Mystique 220 coming in 1997.-History:...
, released in 1996, was their first attempt to make a card with good gaming performance and a price point able to sell into that market, but a number of design decisions resulted in poor quality 3D images and poor performance (while the 2D support remained excellent, as always). Matrox nevertheless made bold performance claims for the Mystique, but was widely derided in reviews as offering performance nowhere near the contemporary Voodoo1.
A refresh started with the short-lived G100, which was quickly replaced by the
Matrox G200The G200 is a 2D, 3D, and video accelerator chip for personal computers designed by Matrox. It was released in 1998.-History:Matrox had been known for years as a significant player in the high-end 2D graphics accelerator market. Cards they produced were excellent Windows accelerators, and some of...
. The G200 was sold as two models, the Millennium G200 was a higher-end version with faster SGRAM memory, while the Mystique G200 used slower memory but added a TV-out port. The G200 offered competent 3D performance for the first time, but was released shortly before a new generation of cards from
NvidiaNvidia is a multinational corporation which specializes in the development of graphics processing units and chipset technologies for workstations, personal computers, and mobile devices...
and
ATIAs a word, Ati may refer to:* Ati, a town in Chad* Ati, a Negrito ethnic group in the Philippines** Ati-Atihan Festival, an annual celebration held in the Philippines* Ati, a queen of the fabled Land of Punt in Africa...
that completely outperformed it. Later versions in the
Matrox G400The G400 is a video card made by Matrox, released in September 1999. The graphics processor contains a 2D GUI, video, and Direct3D 6.0 3D accelerator...
series were never able to regain the crown, and despite huge claims for the
Matrox ParheliaMatrox Parhelia-512 is a GPU with full support for DirectX 8.1 and incorporating several DirectX 9.0 features. It was best known for its ability to drive three monitors and its Coral Reef tech demo.-Background:...
, their performance continued to be quickly outpaced by the major players.
Since then, Matrox has continued to shift the focus of its card designs towards specialized, niche markets, moving more deeply into enterprise, industrial, and government applications. In recent years they have held no more than a 3–5% share of the total video card market. Matrox is now divided in three divisions: Matrox Graphics, Matrox Video, and Matrox Imaging. Matrox Graphics is the primary consumer and end-user brand, while Matrox Video markets digital video editing solutions, and Matrox Imaging sells high-end video capture systems and "smart cameras", video cameras with a built-in computer for
machine visionMachine vision is the application of computer vision to industry and manufacturing. Whereas computer vision is the general discipline of making computers see , machine vision, being an engineering discipline, is interested in digital input/output devices and computer networks to control other...
applications.
Driver Support
To support Unix and Linux, Matrox has released binary only drivers for most of their product line and one partially
open sourceOpen source is an approach to the design, development, and distribution of software, offering practical accessibility to a software's source code. Some consider open source as one of various possible design approaches, while others consider it a critical strategic element of their operations...
driver for the G550 card which comes with a
binary blobIn open source culture, binary blob is a pejorative term for an object file loaded into the kernel of a free or open source operating system without publicly available source code...
to enable some additional functionality. In addition to the proprietary drivers provided by Matrox the
DRIIn computing, the Direct Rendering Infrastructure is an interface and a free software implementation used in the X Window System to securely allow user applications to access the video hardware without requiring data to be passed through the X server. Its primary application is to provide...
community has provided fully GPL'd drivers for many more of the devices.
http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/HAL
See also
- Computer graphics
Computer graphics are graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of pictorial data by a computer....
- Graphics chip
- Graphics processing unit
A graphics processing unit or GPU is a specialized processor that offloads 3D graphics rendering from the microprocessor. It is used in embedded systems, mobile phones, personal computers, workstations, and game consoles...
- Matrox RT.X100
The RT.X100 Pro Suite is a real-time PCI video editing card manufactured by Matrox Corporation. With the use of Adobe Premiere it enables a real time preview on TV or Video Monitor. It is generally bundled with Adobe Premiere Pro , Adobe Audition , and Adobe Encore DVD...
Companies
- Nvidia
Nvidia is a multinational corporation which specializes in the development of graphics processing units and chipset technologies for workstations, personal computers, and mobile devices...
- ATI Technologies
ATI Technologies Inc. was a major Canadian designer and supplier of graphics processing units and motherboard chipsets. In 2006, the company was acquired by Advanced Micro Devices and was renamed the AMD Graphics Product Group , although the ATI brand was retained for graphics cards.The AMD...
- SiS
Silicon Integrated Systems is a company that manufactures, among other things, motherboard chipsets. The company was founded in 1987 in Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan.-Business:...
External links