What Happened To XGI Graphics?

XGI Technology is still in business, but what has happened to them? We once saw hope in them for providing discrete graphics processors to take on the NVIDIA and ATI duopoly, but they have since discontinued their Volari 8 series. While they're no longer producing these desktop chips, they remain an active player in the server and embedded graphics industry -- accompanied by their open-source driver.

XGI Technology, or eXtreme Graphics Innovation, is a Taiwan-based graphics company that had started out in 2003 with the acquisition of Trident Microsystems and the graphics division of SiS (Silicon Integrated Systems). In late 2003 XGI had rolled out the Volari Duo, which was an AGP graphics card with two GPUs on the same PCB. While today we have NVIDIA SLI and ATI/AMD CrossFire, XGI's concept was very interesting back in 2003. However, their underdeveloped drivers had caused the Volari Duo and their other products to run slow and face other visual disturbances. Some of XGI's other early graphics cards included the Volari V3, V3XT, V5, V8, and the V8 Ultra. All of these cards were AGP based and are comparative to NVIDIA's and ATI's slower products for their time.