Intel announces final AGP 3.0 spec, to carry graphical load

By Alun Williams

Posted on 12 Sep 2002 at 12:52

The significance of the AGP 3.0 spec, newly announced by Intel, relates to the handling of throughput for intensive graphical apps.

Dealing with the graphics bus that runs from a graphics card to a processor, the specification handles a doubling of bandwidth for improved processing of digital effects. In particular, volumetric rendering, 3-D animation and modelling, and general digital editing and special effects.

With AGP standing for 'Accelerated Graphics Port', the 3.0 spec defines the AGP 8x implementations produced by graphics processing companies, such as ATi and NVidia. The previous 1.0 and 2.0 specs related, logically enough, to AGP 2x and 4x technology. The 8x implementation is backwards compatible.

While initially aimed at high-end workstation graphics, Intel anticipates it making an impact on the desktop market in 2003 as desktop applications become more bandwidth-intensive, ie tasks such as video-editing that require a lot of data throughput.

'The continuous progression of discrete AGP graphics, from 2x to 4x to 8x, will enable graphics hardware vendors to drive more and more vertices processing and pixel synthesizing capability,' said Jason Ziller, Intel technology initiatives manager, 'and lead the software developer community to deliver superb 3-D characterization, digital content creation, editing, and production.'

Chipsets supporting AGP 8x, for both dual processor and uni-processor workstations, will be released by Intel before the end of 2002.

Described as the final AGP specification release, the announcement was made at the Intel Developer Forum, Fall 2002 in San Jose. It follows two years of collaboration between Intel and the major graphics vendors. It's the 'final release' because PCI Express technology is on the horizon for 2004. This is intended to be a general-purpose, high-speed architecture, unifying a number of I/O connections.

You can read the AGP 3.0 specification at developer.intel.com.