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The report below is available from the Inquest Reports Archive.  Please send email to info@inqst.com for more information.

Partitioning Talisman

Table of Contents and Introduction

Microsofts's Talisman is a powerful and somewhat controversial initiative which significantly extends 3D graphics and multimedia performance on the PC platform. Talisman combines a new and efficient object oriented programming model with an innovative hardware acceleration architecture. This combination drives toward new extremes in 3D image quality and performance which would be prohibitively costly using traditional architectures.

Graphics chip manufacturers, with a vested interest in their own acceleration architectures, must weigh out the technical complexity, cost and strategic implications of choosing either to include, or exclude Talisman in their architectural roadmap. This study offers a bottom-up implementation strategy analysis, which defines Talisman compatibility at its lowest level, and maps out a progressive implementation roadmap spanning the entire PC price/performance spectrum. In addition, the implications of the Talisman programming model to software developers is examined in detail. Following are a few of the issues covered:

  • What are the essential features and capabilities which define Talisman Compatibility?

  • How can Talisman compatibility be achieved and accelerated in next generation chips without major architectural changes?

  • How can a 2-5x performance enhancement be delivered on some platforms without additional acceleration?

  • What is the value of Talisman to content developers?

  • What are the implications of Microsoft's cancellation of the Escalante Reference Design?

  • How is it possible to modularly expand 3D acceleration resources in a way which was never before possible?

Talisman seems to be a Top-Down strategy. This report encapsulates the Bottom-Up half of the Talisman strategy which Microsoft does not articulate. The report is 128 pages in length and is priced at $4000 plus $350 for additional copies. With the purchase of two additional copies, InQuest will include a content based performance characterization model which simulates a wide variety of Talisman implementations based on different types of content, different architectures and different degrees of hardware acceleration.