I know that Alf Covey recently hinted at some hardware issues which is why it was delayed…

Well, certainly the whole reason for it slipping is the board's have not been production worthy, and that's what Alf was referring to.

So the delays aren't at chip level at all?

Nope. The chip was finalised for the 5500 series quite some time ago, and hasn't changed since then.

So, Is the 6000 going to do 8 sample FSAA?

I don't think that's something we've ever publicly acknowledged…

…but its something the T-Buffer could do…?

The hardware could certainly support it; there are software issues in terms of being able to do that. Its something we'd like to do, but whether it makes it in the first driver release I can't say.

Obviously you've been involved with Voodoo since day one…

Yes, I am a bit familiar with it!

…now the development of Voodoo is coming to an end, what are you personally doing within the company?

Well, I was involved directly with the VSA-100, with the coding of that, quite a bit actually. It will probably be the last product that I'm ever involved in the implementation of because its not really what I want to be doing anymore.

I'm spending a lot of time now working on our strategic visions, and looking at in particular the opportunities that are present for us now with the GigaPixel architecture, in terms of some areas outside of the PC space. There are some extremely high volume, high growth areas where 3D is still in its infancy. We see those markets very much as we see 3D was on the PC not 5 years ago - there was a lot of developer interest, and a lot of consumer interest - no one really knew what was going to happen, but 3dfx kind of took control, and arguably invented 3D gaming on the PC. We believe that substantial opportunities exist in similar emerging markets also.

I suppose were talking about PDA's, mobiles as well as consoles…?

Well, I mean there are so many consumer information devices that are coming, and clearly many of them are very, very capable entertainment devices.

There will continue to be more and more momentum in terms of putting 3D on the web, and for a company like 3dfx, its very important that we move beyond gaming applications. There's certainly is a robust gaming market, but the substantial advancements in 3D come as it becomes a necessary component of web browsers and desktop computer applications, etc. We're not there yet, but every year that goes by, almost every quarter now, there yet another announcement, yet another major web page that is now using 3D visualisations - so really a lot of this is coming.

So we could be looking at accelerated 3D Java plugins?

There's certainly a lot of different things people are doing in 3D, and really its standardisation that's a problem. But the good news it the interest is there, and there are very large companies that are very interested in setting standards.