S3 Graphics

S3 was founded and incorporated in January 1989 by Dado Banatao and Ronald Yara. It was named S3 as it was Banatao's third startup company.(Startup Number 3).

The company's first products were among the earliest graphical user interface (GUI) accelerators. These chips were popular with video card manufacturers, and its followup designs, including the Trio64, made strong inroads with OEMs. S3 took over the high end 2D market just prior to the popularity of 3D accelerators.

S3's first 3D accelerator chips, the ViRGE series, controlled half of the market early on but could not compete against the high end 3D accelerators from ATI, Nvidia, and 3Dfx. In some cases, the chips performed worse than software-based solutions without an accelerator. As S3 lost market share, its offerings competed in the mid-range market. Its next design, the Savage 3D, was released early and suffered from driver issues, but it introduced S3TC, which became an industry standard. S3 bought Number Nine's assets in 1999, then merged with Diamond Multimedia. The resulting company renamed itself SONICblue, refocused on consumer electronics, and sold its graphics business to VIA Technologies. Savage-derived chips were integrated into numerous VIA motherboard chipsets. Subsequent discrete derivations carried the brand names DeltaChrome and GammaChrome.

In July 2011, HTC Corporation announced it was buying VIA Technologies' stake in S3 Graphics, thus becoming the majority owner of S3 Graphics. In November, the United States International Trade Commission ruled against S3 in a patent dispute with Apple.