What is S3s involvment with Dolphin?
To better provide texture performance on Dolphin, Nintendo called upon S3 for their S3TC texture compression technology. S3TC, which is hardwired into the graphics chip provides a 6:1 ratio for compressing textures. Which means if a developer wants to cram 50MB of textures into Dolphin, it will only cost them about 8MB or memory space, and because the technology is part of the graphics chip it won’t affect the system resources. What all this means is that Dolphin will feature exquisitely detailed textures with great variance instead of ones that are monotonous and blurry. “S3 will be a major force in accelerating the performance we’ll achieve on Dolphin,” explained Nintendo of America’s Howard Lincoln. “With their unique graphics compression technology, developers will be able to provide players with more complex and colorful graphics. Coupled with our previously announced strategic agreements with companies like IBM, Matsushita, ArtX and MoSys, incorporation of S3 technology will make
