Creative announces that its 3Dlabs division is getting out of the workstation graphics market. Its Wildcat line of high-end graphics boards are used in engineering workstations from Sun Microsystems (such as its Ultra 45 workstation) and Hewlett-Packard.
Its graphics boards are certified for use with CAD software from Autodesk, ANSYS, Bentley Systems, CoCreate, PTC, SolidWorks, and UGS. Sales of "other" (which includes the Wildcat cards) made up just 7% of Creative's revenues.
3Dlabs was bought by Creative in 2002. The Singapore firm better known for SoundBlaster cards and Zen MP3 players -- and that's where it is focussing its efforts, on mobile electronics. The company's ceo foolishly announced they would out-Apple the iPod, as have the CEOs of several other technology firms. I think Creative has the #2 position in the MP3 player market -- a mere 10% or so.
For CAD users with 3Dlabs graphics boards, it would appear you can continue using them as long as drivers are available that support the software you use it with. Perhaps third-parties will step in to update drivers in the future, as sometimes happens with other orphaned hardware.
Update
The Register has a history of 3dLabs, which reminds us of its CAD roots: the graphics board was originally the Intergraph Wildcat.
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