S3 Graphics
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Computer hardware |
| Founded | January 1989 |
| Headquarters | Fremont, California, U.S. |
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Key people
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Dado Banatao and Ronald Yara |
| Products | Video cards |
| Parent | HTC |
| Website | www.s3graphics.com |
S3 Graphics, Ltd (commonly referred to as S3) is an American computer graphics company. The company is perhaps best known for its ViRGE and its much improved successor Savage 3D and Chrome series. Struggling against competition from 3dfx Interactive, ATI and Nvidia during the height of the 3D accelerator wars, the graphics portion of the company was spun off into a new joint effort with VIA Technologies. The new company focused on the mobile graphics market, and became a major player in this space. The company was purchased by HTC in 2011. Although primarily a mobile technology company, they still produce graphics accelerators for home computers under the "S3 Chrome" brand name.
S3 was founded and incorporated in January 1989 by Dado Banatao and Ronald Yara. On March 5, 1993, S3 began an Initial Public Offering of 2,000,000 shares of on Nasdaq. After several profitable years as an independent startup company, struggling with the transition to integrated 3D cards, S3 remodeled itself as a consumer electronics company and sold off its core graphics division to a joint venture with VIA Technologies for $323 million. The joint venture, S3 Graphics, continues to develop and market chipsets based on the S3 graphics technology.
The reformed company carried over a substantial cash pile from the profitable TRIO (see below) days and a successful investment in UMC, a Taiwanese semiconductor foundry. On November 15, 2000, S3 changed its name to SONICBlue and its NASDAQ stock symbol to SBLU. The new business model focused on digital media and information appliance opportunities while the graphics division was sold to VIA Technologies as S3 Graphics. ReplayTV, Rio, and GoVideo were some of the brands developed by SONICBlue. On March 21, 2003 SONICBlue filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
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