The Tseng Labs

Tseng Labs

Tseng Laboratories, Inc. was a maker of graphics chips and controllers for IBM PC compatibles, based in Newtown, Pennsylvania, and founded by Jack H-N Tseng....

 ET4000 was a popular graphics accelerator chip during the early 1990s, commonly found in many 486 and compatible systems.

At introduction (1991), the original ET4000 was notable for its outstanding host-interface (ISA

Industry Standard Architecture

Industry Standard Architecture is a computer bus standard for IBM PC compatible computers introduced with the IBM Personal Computer to support its Intel 8088 microprocessor's 8-bit external data bus and extended to 16 bits for the IBM Personal Computer/AT's Intel 80286 processor...

) throughput. Twice as fast as VGA-chips from Trident Microsystems

Trident Microsystems

Trident Microsystems is a supplier of display-processors for flat panel displays . At one time, Trident was also a supplier of PC graphics chipsets and sound controllers.- History :...

 and Oak Technologies, the ET4000's only superior was a VRAM-based board from Video 7 along with ATI

ATI Technologies

ATI Technologies Inc. was a semiconductor technology corporation based in Markham, Ontario, Canada, that specialized in the development of graphics processing units and chipsets. Founded in 1985 as Array Technologies Inc., the company was listed publicly in 1993 and was acquired by Advanced Micro...

's VGAWonder+. Hardware GUI acceleration had not yet become mainstream, and so host-throughput was the dominating factor in a graphical-application's redraw speed. Equipped with an ET4000, a raw Windows PC would scroll text-windows noticeably faster and more smoothly. (According to Richard Ferraro's book Programmer's Guide to EGA, VGA, the original ET4000 devoted as much as 30% of its silicon die area to a large host-interface FIFO

FIFO

FIFO is an acronym for First In, First Out, an abstraction related to ways of organizing and manipulation of data relative to time and prioritization...

.)

Hardware acceleration was introduced in the ET4000/W32. Although the W32 maintained Tseng's stellar host-interface throughput, hardware-acceleration reduced its importance (except for DOS

DOS

DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...

). By the time PCI

Peripheral Component Interconnect

Conventional PCI is a computer bus for attaching hardware devices in a computer...

 Windows accelerators became commonplace, Tseng's high host-throughput was no longer a distinguishing feature. Nevertheless, as a mid-priced Windows accelerator, the W32 benchmarked favorably against competing S3

S3 Graphics

S3 Graphics, Ltd is an American company specializing in graphics chipsets. Although they do not have the large market share that they once had, they still produce graphics accelerators for home computers under the "S3 Chrome" brand name.-History:...

 and ATI chips.

None of the members of the ET4000 family offered an integrated RAMDAC

RAMDAC

Random Access Memory Digital-to-Analog Converter is a combination of three fast DACs with a small SRAM used in computer graphics display adapters to store the color palette and to generate the analog signals to drive a color monitor...

. By the time the W32p was introduced, the lack of this feature harmed Tseng's competitiveness. Still, the W32p was used on several popular mid-range VLB

VESA Local Bus

The VESA Local Bus was mostly used in personal computers. VESA Local Bus worked alongside the ISA bus; it acted as a high-speed conduit for memory-mapped I/O and DMA, while the ISA bus handled interrupts and port-mapped I/O.-Historical overview:In the early 1990s, the I/O bandwidth of...

-based video cards. W32p offered solid Windows GUI acceleration at a reasonable price, along with considerably competent DOS VGA performance. Tseng carried this DOS performance along with them with their later ET6000 accelerator.

Tseng Labs' chipsets were part of many companies' lineups, notably with Hercules' Dynamite series, the Diamond

Diamond Multimedia

Diamond Multimedia is a company that specializes in many forms of multimedia technology. They have produced graphics cards, motherboards, modems, sound cards and MP3 players, however the company began with the production of the TrackStar, a PC add-on card which emulated Apple II computers...

 Stealth 32 and several Speedstar cards, and on many generic boards.

Models

• ET4000AX - Old ISA
  Industry Standard Architecture
  Industry Standard Architecture is a computer bus standard for IBM PC compatible computers introduced with the IBM Personal Computer to support its Intel 8088 microprocessor's 8-bit external data bus and extended to 16 bits for the IBM Personal Computer/AT's Intel 80286 processor...
  
   chipset, VLB
  VESA Local Bus
  The VESA Local Bus was mostly used in personal computers. VESA Local Bus worked alongside the ISA bus; it acted as a high-speed conduit for memory-mapped I/O and DMA, while the ISA bus handled interrupts and port-mapped I/O.-Historical overview:In the early 1990s, the I/O bandwidth of...
  
   OK (16-bit host interface, good response), up to 1MB video RAM.
• ET4000/W32 - Accelerated 32-bit host interface. 32-bit memory interface. Fair performance, comparable to Cirrus Logic
  Cirrus Logic
  Cirrus Logic is a fabless semiconductor supplier specializing in analog, mixed-signal, and audio DSP integrated circuits . They are presently headquartered in Austin, Texas. Their audio processors and audio converters are found in many professional audio and consumer entertainment products,...
  
   CL-GD5426. Windows accelerator up to 2MB. Supported ISA
  Industry Standard Architecture
  Industry Standard Architecture is a computer bus standard for IBM PC compatible computers introduced with the IBM Personal Computer to support its Intel 8088 microprocessor's 8-bit external data bus and extended to 16 bits for the IBM Personal Computer/AT's Intel 80286 processor...
  
  , EISA
  Extended Industry Standard Architecture
  The Extended Industry Standard Architecture is a bus standard for IBM PC compatible computers...
  
  , and VLB
  VESA Local Bus
  The VESA Local Bus was mostly used in personal computers. VESA Local Bus worked alongside the ISA bus; it acted as a high-speed conduit for memory-mapped I/O and DMA, while the ISA bus handled interrupts and port-mapped I/O.-Historical overview:In the early 1990s, the I/O bandwidth of...
  
  .
• ET4000/W32i - enhanced memory controller (32-bit wide with interleaving
  Interleaving
  In computer science and telecommunication, interleaving is a way to arrange data in a non-contiguous way to increase performance.It is typically used:* In error-correction coding, particularly within data transmission, disk storage, and computer memory....
  
   with 2MB — similar to S3 805i, resulting in 85% the performance of a plain 64-bit bus). Very fast BitBLTs (efficient memory arbitration).
• ET4000/W32p (1994) - PCI
  Peripheral Component Interconnect
  Conventional PCI is a computer bus for attaching hardware devices in a computer...
  
   interface, also used with VLB
  VESA Local Bus
  The VESA Local Bus was mostly used in personal computers. VESA Local Bus worked alongside the ISA bus; it acted as a high-speed conduit for memory-mapped I/O and DMA, while the ISA bus handled interrupts and port-mapped I/O.-Historical overview:In the early 1990s, the I/O bandwidth of...
  
  . Special video support. Several revisions, significant variation. Revisions before C or D may have crippled/broken PCI performance.