Actix Systems

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Not to be confused with Actrix.
Actix Systems, Inc.
IndustryComputer
Founded1990; 34 years ago (1990) in Santa Clara, California
FounderStephen W. Cheng
Defunct1998; 26 years ago (1998)
FateDissolution
ProductsGraphics adapters
Number of employees
27 (1996)

Actix Systems, Inc., was an American graphics adapter manufacturer active from 1990 to 1998 and based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The company was founded by Stephen W. Cheng and initially specialized in a subset of graphics adapters known as GUI accelerators, becoming a major player in the field.[1] Toward the mid-1990s the company began manufacturing more general-purpose adapters under their GraphicsEngine brand.

History[edit]

Foundation (1990–1992)[edit]

Actix Systems was founded by Stephen W. Cheng in Santa Clara, California, in 1990. Cheng, born in Chiayi in 1945, graduated from the Texas A&M School of Medicine with an M.D./Ph.D. in the 1970s. He was briefly employed by Mostek in Massachusetts from 1982 to 1983, switching to nearby Wang Laboratories where he was employed to design a digital PBX system. In 1984 he was hired by Lucent Technologies as the lead designer of a fiber-optic communications system, and finally in 1987 he was hired by Digital Equipment Corporation, where he was the program manager of networking. Cheng moved from Massachusetts to California to found Actix Systems, combining his disparate experience in the computer industry to specialize in designing graphics adapters.[2]

The company initially focused on a subset of graphics adapters known as GUI accelerators, which were designed specifically to speed up the drawing of elements in a graphical user interface (GUI) and to enhance its overall visual appearance by increasing the color depth and resolution. Actix was one of the first companies to design products in this field.[3] Their first product was the Tiger 10, released in August 1991 and aimed at corporate users of Microsoft's Windows 3.0. The Tiger 10 shipped with a proprietary device driver for Windows, while the card featured integrated circuits manufactured by Texas Instruments. It supported the standard VGA resolution of 640 by 480 pixels, all the way up to 1280-by-960-pixel Super VGA, with certain display modes possessing a 90 MHz refresh rate.[4] A month later,[5] the company released the Quantum VGA, a GUI accelerator based on S3 Incorporated's 86C911 chipset.[6][7] The Quantum VGA was received warmly in InfoWorld, where reviewer Jim Canning wrote that the board offered "major relief to beleaguered 80286s and 80386SXes".[8] Actix followed up the Quantum VGA with the HiColor Spectra Board, a consumer-oriented, general-purpose graphics adapter based on Tseng Labs' ET 4000 chip that boosted the standard VGA color depth from 256 colors to 32,768, owing to a Sierra RAMDAC on board.[9][10]

GraphicsEngine line (1992–1998)[edit]

In January 1992, Actix introduced the first two models in their long line of GraphicsEngine adapters. Called the GraphicsEngine VGA, they were also based on S3's GUI accelerator chip and comprised two models: one with 512 KB of video RAM, and another with 1 MB. The former supported up to a 1024-by-768-pixel resolution with 4-bit color depth, while the latter supported up to a 1280-by-960-pixel resolution with 8-bit color depth.[11]: 49  In March 1992, the company introduced the GraphicsEngine Display Accelerator, which incorporated the same RAMDAC as the HiColor Spectra, allowing the board to display 16-bit color at a 1280-by-1024-pixel resolution.[10] Both boards received mixed assessments in PC Magazine,[11]: 49 [10] while InfoWorld rated the GraphicsEngine Display Accelerator the fastest board on the low-end of the GUI accelerator market.[12]: 64 

By the end of 1993, Actix had moved to a larger office in Santa Clara, which housed their 20 employees (up from 10 in 1992).[13][10] The company was described by Transpacific magazine as protective of the details of their operations, only divulging that they posted $9 million in sales in 1993.[13]

The company introduced their first VESA Local Bus product with the GraphicsEngine 32VL in mid-1993. The VESA Local Bus was a motherboard technology that allowed expansion cards to access the memory bus of Intel's i486 processor directly, breaking the bottleneck of the antiquated but still commonplace Industry Standard Architecture bus and allowing for much-accelerated graphics output.[14][15] Actix followed up with their first two products based on the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus, the GraphicsEngine 64 PCI and GraphicsEngine Ultra 64 PCI, in 1994. PCI was an entirely new motherboard bus standard invented by Intel; it had much higher bandwidth than both ISA and VESA Local Bus and eventually came to dominate the motherboard landscape in the mid-1990s.[16]: 242–249 

One of the company's last products was the GraphicsEngine Ultra AV in 1995. Powered by S3's Vision968 graphics chipset and a Texas Instruments RAMDAC, it could display graphics at up to a 1600-by-1200-pixel resolution.[17]: 287  The company coasted through 1996 with $17 million in annual sales. By this point the company had moved again to Sunnyvale, California, and employed 27 workers. Actix in 1997 planned a pivot to providing video conferencing products for enterprises.[2] These plans did not pan out for the company, however, and in 1998 Actix petitioned to dissolve in the state of California.[18]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Dvorak, John C. (March 17, 1994). "Quicker but streamlined PowerMac wave of future". The Vancouver Sun: 62 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. ^ a b "Transpacific 100: Stephen Cheng". Transpacific (67): 22 et seq. October 1996 – via Gale.
  3. ^ "Windows accelerator board: new 70 MHz/0 wait-state board increases Windows performance by three to five times". EDGE. 3 (96). EDGE Publishing: 20. March 23, 1992 – via Gale.
  4. ^ Rohrbough, Linda (August 13, 1991). "New graphics board makes Windows twice as fast". Newsbytes. The Washington Post Company – via Gale.
  5. ^ "Minigrams". Computergram International. GlobalData. September 6, 1991 – via Gale.
  6. ^ Harbert, Tammi (October 17, 1991). "Graphics board makers anoint Microsoft; but IBM's register-conscious graphics modes will live on as developers tie in to the CPU bus". EDN. 36 (21A). UBM Canon: 1 et seq. – via Gale.
  7. ^ Joch, Alan (January 1992). "Tweaking Windows". Byte. 17 (1). McGraw-Hill: 250 – via Gale.
  8. ^ Canning, Jim (November 18, 1991). "Actix's Quantum VGA adapter jump starts Windows". InfoWorld. 13 (46). IDG Publications: 109 – via Google Books.
  9. ^ O'Brien, Bill (September 1991). "Abundant color: Actix HiColor Spectra Board". PC Sources. 2 (9). Ziff-Davis: 309 – via Gale.
  10. ^ a b c d Betts, Kellyn (March 17, 1992). "Actix GraphicsEngine Display Accelerator". PC Magazine. 11 (5). Ziff-Davis: 359 – via Google Books.
  11. ^ a b Cohn, Michael (January 28, 1992). "Two Windows Speed Solutions: One Hardware, One Software". PC Magazine. 11 (2). Ziff-Davis: 49–50 – via Google Books.
  12. ^ Richter, Jake (May 18, 1992). "S3 video boards". InfoWorld. 14 (20). IDG Publications: 62–71 – via Google Books.
  13. ^ a b "The Transpacific 100". Transpacific. 9 (8): 49 et seq. December 1994 – via Gale.
  14. ^ "GraphicsEngine 32VL". PC Sources. 4 (4). Ziff-Davis: 245. April 1993 – via Gale.
  15. ^ Gibson, Steve; Peggy Watt (June 28, 1993). "Life in the fast lane". InfoWorld. 15 (26). IDG Publications: 118 et seq. – via Gale.
  16. ^ Mace, Jeff (December 6, 1994). "Mainstream Graphics Accelerators: Rush Power". PC Magazine. 13 (21). Ziff-Davis: 239–312 – via Google Books.
  17. ^ Mace, Jeff (December 5, 1995). "Graphics Accelerators: Display Mates". PC Magazine. Ziff-Davis: 273–352 – via Google Books.
  18. ^ "Actix Systems, Inc". OpenCorporates. n.d. Archived from the original on August 4, 2023.
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