The TMS34010, developed by Texas Instruments and released in 1986, is the first programmable graphics processorintegrated circuit. While specialized graphics hardware existed at the time, such as blitters, the TMS34010 chip is a microprocessor which includes graphics-oriented instructions. This allows it to serve as a combined CPU and what would later be called a GPU. It was used as such in a number of high-profile arcade games, including Hard Drivin', Mortal Kombat, and NBA Jam, and in professional-level video accelerator cards for IBM PC compatibles in the early 1990s. The TMS34010 is a bit addressable, 32-bit processor, with two register files, each with fifteen registers and sharing a sixteenth stack pointer. The instruction set supports drawing into two-dimensional bitmaps, arbitrary variable-width data, and arithmetic operations on pixel data. The TMS34010 is capable of executing any general-purpose program and is supported by an ANSI compliant C compiler. The design of the TMS34010 was led by Karl Guttag, who previously worked on the Texas Instruments TMS9918video chip. Development took place at TI facilities in Bedford and Houston. First silicon was working in Houston in December 1985, with shipment of development boards to IBM's workstation facility in Kingston, New York, in January 1986. TI's follow-up processor, the TMS34020, could be used with a floating point coprocessor to render three-dimensional graphics.
Uses
Arcade games
The TMS34010 was used in many coin-operated arcade games from 1989 through 1995. Atari Games
The TMS chips were compliant with the 1989 Texas Instruments Graphics Architecture standard, and in the early 1990s were used in professional-level TIGA video coprocessor boards for MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, and SCO Unix. In a 1991 article on graphics adapters, PC Magazine reported that the fastest boards for regenerating AutoCAD test images were based on the TMS34010. The Aura Scuzzygraph, Radius PowerView and Radius SuperView external SCSI graphics cards for Apple Macintosh computers were also based on the TMS34010. Sun386i used TMS34010 in the CG5 videocard.
TI made an unsuccessful effort in 1987 and 1988 to convince games makers such as Nintendo and Sega 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 computer, using a small TMS34010 adapter card. The Flippy was designed as the basis of a game development system for consoles and as a PC gaming card in its own right.
TMS34020
The successor to the TMS34010, the TMS34020, provides several enhancements including an interface for a special graphics floating point coprocessor, the TMS34082. The primary function of the TMS34082 is to allow the TMS340 architecture to generate high quality three-dimensional graphics. The performance level of 60 million verticesper second was advanced at the time. The TMS34020 was used in some arcade games, such as Revolution X. The "Rambrandt" Amiga extension card from Progressive Peripherals & Software supported up to four TMS34020, for use in virtual reality simulations. The chip was also used in the Amiga A2410 graphics card found in the A2500 based Unix workstation.
