Getting back to the first couple of dimensions
The DeltaChrome isn't all about shaders and polygons, though. S3 has also given its new GPU the ability to speed up everyday desktop work. DeltaChrome can accelerate the drawing of anti-aliased fonts in Windows, and S3's internal benchmarks show it beating up on the big dawgs in screen draws when all of WinXP's eye candy is turned on. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't provide hooks for the acceleration of ClearType, so you'll have to choose between hardware acceleration and ClearType's sub-pixel font AA.

The chip also includes dual 400MHz, 10-bit DACs, so it can drive a pair of CRT monitors. There are also facilities for a DVI output and a range of TV outs, including composite video, S-Video, and HDTV component outputs. All HDTV resolutions are supported, up to 1080p. I saw a demo of a WMP9 clip running at 720p resolution on an LCD monitor; playback was fluid, and the images were crisp, with good definition. S3 says computer desktops look great using a component output on an HDTV, too, although I didn't get to see that.

I expect the DeltaChrome will find its way into a number of home theater PCs on the strength of its video output capabilities. In fact, I asked about the possibility of seeing a VIA EPIA board with a DeltaChrome on it, and the S3 folks told me they are in talks with appliance companies interested in using DeltaChrome for set-top boxes and the like.

Before the output heads to a display, the DeltaChrome can rotate images 90, 180, or 270 degrees using full, hardware-based image rotation. S3 emphasized that this was not just a software or driver routine. Everything gets rotated—3D, 2D drawing, video overlays, the works. I saw this feature demonstrated this feature on a snazzy LCD display that pivots 90 degress on its base. Turn the display on its side, and wide becomes tall. Surfing the web on a super-long page looks like, well, web browser "native mode," as if it were always intended this way. Tablet PC devices should benefit from hardware rotation, as well.

The motion video potion
Perhaps the most advanced portion of the DeltaChrome that isn't dedicated to 3D is its "Chromotion" video engine. Like ATI's R3x0 chips, the DeltaChrome's programmable pixel shaders have access to video data streams, to which they can apply real-time, Photoshop-style effects like emboss, edge detect, and blur. S3's control panel software will let users apply effects to video being played back in most apps, although I'm not sure how much use adding an emboss filter in real time really is.

I don't know about you, but I prefer my rhinos embossed

S3 has struck up a partnership with Intervideo to include support for pixel shader effects in its WinDVD app. S3 is also talking with Adobe about plugs-in for Photoshop. Already, the S3 software types have figured out how to do "de-blocking" of over-compressed video, and noise removal filters are in the works, too.

To make DeltaChrome pixel shader video hooks more useful, S3 has added custom pixel shader instructions for video handling. One benefit is the DeltaChrome's adaptive per-pixel deinterlacing capability, which purportedly eliminates artifacts like bob and weave. S3's pixel shaders also assist in video playback by accelerating iDCT.

Video de-blocking at work. Source: S3 Graphics.

Video scaling is assisted by a programmable 4x4 kernel filter, which can apply sharpen filters and the like to increase image clarity. This kernel filter is distinct from the pixel shaders, and does its thing before data is handed off to the pixel shader.

DeltaChrome's brand-new video processing unit has a leg up, according to S3 Graphics' video gurus, because it maps more closely to Microsoft's latest API revisions for video handling. Microsoft is changing some of its assumptions for video processing to allow things like multiple video operations to happen with only a single read/write to memory. The DeltaChrome's hardware registers are mapped directly to the software's expectations, so it should offer better performance than older designs.