Fremont, California-based LSI Logic Corp affiliate Headland Technology Inc has two new graphics controller chips, the HT216 and HT209: the HT216 is claimed to represents an industry first in that it supports operation directly on an 80286, 80386SX or 80386 processor’s local bus, thus operating as much as four times faster – up to 33MHz against 8MHz when runnning on the input-output bus – using as few as five additional chips, including memory; the HT209 is a high-resolution VRAM VGA controller with 72Hz 800 by 600 refresh rate, and optimise performance on the local bus, it features a 16-bit data and a full 80X86, address bus interface and independent dot and memory clock; each puts up as many as 256 colours with resolutions up to 1,024 by 768 on interlaced or non-interlaced monitors as well as access to as much as 1Mb of display memory; both chips feature a hardware graphics cursor and are hardware-compatible with IBM VGA and backwards compatible with the EGA, CGA, MDA and HGC standards and support both AT and Micro Channel buses and provide a 132-column text mode; the HT216 is under $25 in 10,000-up quantities with samples set for January; the HT209 under $27 in quantities of 10,000, with samples now, and volume in the first quarter of 1991.
