Month: April 2017

Simulation and the Apollo Guidance Computer

Today, when developing embedded control systems, it is standard practice to test control algorithms against some kind of “world model”, “plant model” or “environment simulator”.

Using a simulated control system or a virtual platform running the actual control system code, connected to the world model lets you test the control system in a completely virtual and simulated environment (see for example my Trinity of Simulation blog post from a few years ago). This practice of simulating the environment for a control computer is long-standing in the aerospace field in particular, and I have found that it goes back at least to the Apollo program.

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How 3dfx was Built on a Simulator

This blog post was originally published at Intel. After it was retired from the Intel blog system, I reposted the full contents here in order to preserve the information for my own sake. And in case anyone has a pointer here.

How Simulation Started a Billion-Dollar Company

In the early 1990s, “PC graphics” was almost an oxymoron. If you wanted to do real graphics, you bought a “real machine”, most likely a Silicon Graphics workstation. At the PC price-point, fast hardware-accelerated 3D graphics wasn’t doable… until it suddenly was, thanks to Moore’s law. 3dfx was the first company to create fast 3D graphics for PC gamers.  To get off the ground and get funded, 3dfx had to prove that their ideas were workable – and that proof came in the shape of a simulator.  They used the simulator to demo their ideas, try out different design points, develop software pre-silicon, and validate the silicon once it arrived. 

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