Number Nine Visual Technology
More info
- Released
- 1982–1999
- Type
- Graphics cards and chips
- Successor
- Assets bought by S3 in 2000
The Massachusetts graphics card company that built the first 128-bit graphics chip and named its products after Beatles songs.
Number Nine was founded in 1982 in Lexington and began by selling boards built around other vendors' chips, including S3's. In 1995 it shipped the Imagine 128, with an in-house chip and a 128-bit memory bus while rivals sat at 64. The 2D advantage was real in Windows and CAD work, and the marketing made it more real still.
The follow-ups were called Revolution 3D and Ticket to Ride. By the late nineties, though, 3D games were what sold graphics cards, and there the company trailed 3dfx, Nvidia and ATI. Number Nine went bankrupt around the turn of 1999/2000, and S3 picked up what was left.