Famous Graphics Chips: 3Dfx’s Voodoo

This is the latest installment of a series of short articles about graphics chips, controllers, and processors, that changed the course of the computer graphics (CG) industry. 3Dfx was founded in 1994 in San Jose, California by former employees of Silicon Graphics (SGI) with backing from Gordie Campbell's TechFarm. In 1995, the company raised $5.5 million dollars from venture capitalists. 3Dfx released its Voodoo Graphics chipset in November 1996. Voodoo was a 3D-only add-in board (AIB) that required an external VGA chip. VGA (for PC bootup) was supplied to the Voodoo AIB with a pass-through cable which then fed the