The
TMS34010 was the first programmable graphics processor
integrated circuitIn electronics, an integrated circuit is a miniaturized electronic circuit that has been manufactured in the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...
(IC). First
siliconSilicon is the most common metalloid. It is a chemical element, which has the symbol Si and atomic number 14. A tetravalent metalloid, silicon is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon...
was working at
Texas InstrumentsTexas Instruments , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, renowned for developing and commercializing semiconductor and computer technology. TI is the No. 4 manufacturer of semiconductors worldwide after Intel, Samsung and Toshiba, and is the top supplier...
(TI) in Houston in December 1985, and first shipment (a development board) was to
IBMInternational Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM, is a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, Town of North Castle, New York, United States. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating...
's workstation facility in
Kingston, New YorkKingston is a city in Ulster County, New York, United States. It is north of New York City and south of Albany along the Hudson River. The population was 23,456 at the 2000 census...
, in January 1986. Design took place at TI facilities in
BedfordBedford is the county town of Bedfordshire, in the East of England. It is a large town and the administrative centre for the wider Borough of Bedford. According to Bedfordshire County Council's estimates, the town had a population of 79,190 in mid 2005, with 19,720 in the adjacent town of Kempston...
, UK and Houston, Texas, U.S.A.
The TMS34010 was a
bitIn computing and telecommunications a bit is a basic unit of information storage and communication . It is the maximum amount of information that can be stored by a device or other physical system that can normally exist in only two distinct states...
addressable, 32-bit processor, with two fifteen register files sharing a sixteenth stack pointer register.
The
TMS34010 was the first programmable graphics processor
integrated circuitIn electronics, an integrated circuit is a miniaturized electronic circuit that has been manufactured in the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...
(IC). First
siliconSilicon is the most common metalloid. It is a chemical element, which has the symbol Si and atomic number 14. A tetravalent metalloid, silicon is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon...
was working at
Texas InstrumentsTexas Instruments , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, renowned for developing and commercializing semiconductor and computer technology. TI is the No. 4 manufacturer of semiconductors worldwide after Intel, Samsung and Toshiba, and is the top supplier...
(TI) in Houston in December 1985, and first shipment (a development board) was to
IBMInternational Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM, is a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, Town of North Castle, New York, United States. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating...
's workstation facility in
Kingston, New YorkKingston is a city in Ulster County, New York, United States. It is north of New York City and south of Albany along the Hudson River. The population was 23,456 at the 2000 census...
, in January 1986. Design took place at TI facilities in
BedfordBedford is the county town of Bedfordshire, in the East of England. It is a large town and the administrative centre for the wider Borough of Bedford. According to Bedfordshire County Council's estimates, the town had a population of 79,190 in mid 2005, with 19,720 in the adjacent town of Kempston...
, UK and Houston, Texas, U.S.A.
The TMS34010 was a
bitIn computing and telecommunications a bit is a basic unit of information storage and communication . It is the maximum amount of information that can be stored by a device or other physical system that can normally exist in only two distinct states...
addressable, 32-bit processor, with two fifteen register files sharing a sixteenth stack pointer register. Its distinguishing characteristics from all other
microprocessorA microprocessor incorporates most or all of the functions of a central processing unit on a single integrated circuit . The first microprocessors emerged in the early 1970s and were used for electronic calculators, using binary-coded decimal arithmetic on 4-bit words...
s up to that time included special instructions for two-dimensional graphics primitives, the first on-chip instruction
cacheIn computer science, a cache is a collection of data duplicating original values stored elsewhere or computed earlier, where the original data is expensive to fetch or to compute, compared to the cost of reading the cache. In other words, a cache is a temporary storage area where frequently...
(256 bytes), arbitrary variable-width data, and arithmetic operations on
pixelIn digital imaging, a pixel is the smallest item of information in an image. Pixels are normally arranged in a 2-dimensional grid, and are often represented using dots or squares. Each pixel is a sample of an original image, where more samples typically provide more-accurate representations of the...
data. It was distinguished from graphics chips that preceded it (such as the NEC 7220 or the
Hitachiis a Japanese multinational corporation specializing in high-technology and services headquartered in Marunouchi Itchome, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan...
63484) by being truly programmable, instead of being limited to executing hardwired primitives. The cache was particularly useful for code fragments that implemented complex bit-level graphics operations. The TMS34010 was supported by a full ANSI compliant C compiler, and was capable of executing any general-purpose program in addition to graphics programs.
The successor to the TMS34010, the TMS34020 (1988), provided several enhancements including an interface for a special graphics
floating pointIn computing, floating point describes a system for numerical representation in which a string of digits represents a rational number....
coprocessor, the TMS34082 (1989). The primary function of the TMS34082 was to allow the TMS340 architecture to generate high quality
three dimensional3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
(3D) graphics. The performance level of 60 million
verticesIn geometry, a vertex is a special kind of point which describes the corners or intersections of geometric shapes. Vertices are commonly used in computer graphics to define the corners of surfaces in 3D models, where each such point is given as a vector.-Of an angle:The vertex of an angle is the...
per second was quite advanced at the time it appeared.
TI made an unsuccessful effort in 1987 and 1988 to convince games makers such as
Nintendois a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel...
and
Segais a multinational video game software and hardware development company, and a home computer and console manufacturer headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan...
to write 3D games and create a new console market. In 1987 TI provided the first demonstration of true real-time 3D games with stereo sound effects on a
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...
(PC), using a small TMS34010 adapter card (called "The Flippy"). The Flippy was designed as the basis of a game development system for consoles and as a PC gaming card in its own right. TI's effort foreshadowed the creation of 3D game consoles by both companies as well as
Sonyis a multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan, and one of the world's largest media conglomerates with revenue exceeding ¥ 7.730.0 trillion, or $78.88 billion U.S. . Sony is one of the leading manufacturers of electronics, video, communications, video game...
in the late 1990s, and the creation of the 3D game and graphics adapter markets in PCs.
MAMEMAME is an emulator application designed to recreate the hardware of arcade game systems in software, with the intent of preserving gaming history and preventing vintage games from being lost or forgotten. The aim of MAME is to be a reference to the inner workings of the emulated arcade machines;...
emulates TMS34010.
This chip was also used on a video cards for an
Apollo/DomainApollo/Domain was a range of workstations developed and produced by Apollo Computer from circa 1980 to 1989. The machines were built around the Motorola 68k family of processors, except for the DN10000, which had from one to four of Apollo's RISC processors, named PRISM.-Operating system:The...
workstations.
The TMS34010 was used in the first commercially successful
WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces...
accelerators in 1990 and 1991, usually referred to as "TIGA" products (
Texas Instruments Graphics ArchitectureTexas Instruments Graphics Architecture was a graphics interface standard created by Texas Instruments that defined the software interface to graphics processors...
).
Further reading
- "TI's TMS34020 Graphics System Processor". (31 October 1990). Microprocessor Report.