brave [little] meme

Geek Nostalgia: I Met the BitBoys.

Cast your mind back to 1993. PC Graphics were just starting to become a big deal, with a companies such as nVidia and 3Dfx just starting to emerge on the PC graphics hardware scene.

Back then, the ‘demo scene’ was a big deal amongst the geek community: small independent groups were hacking together assembly code to create realtime graphics demos that pushed the then-fledgling graphics hardware to its limits. These demos, combining psychedelic visuals and home-spun Techno soundtracks, showcased coding trickery well ahead of its time.

One such group was Future Crew, known amongst other things for their cutting edge Second Reality demo. Future Crew’s work in the demo scene pushed the boundaries of what could be achieved at the time, raising the bar for the demo scene as a whole. Second Reality even went on to become an unofficial benchmark for companies testing their new graphics hardware.

Later, Future Crew became BitBoys, and announced their intention to revolutionise the graphics hardware scene with new graphics chips with specs well in excess of anything else available at the time. Then, high expectations set, they went dark.

As it turns out, they’re alive and well. After a series of acquisitions and halted product releases, bouncing from ATI to AMD, the company was snapped up by Qualcomm in January 2009, and are now working with them on the next generation of mobile graphics processors. I had the pleasure of meeting them, and their new batch of mobile demos, during a company presentation. I was also the only geek in the room who knew who they used to be.

Their roadmap is very impressive, and their hacker spirit seems alive and well. You may also be surprised by how many phones out there right now already carry their work. What struck me the most, however, was the path that led them here: from elite underground demo crew, to plucky underdog in the cut-throat graphics market, to full fledged, badge carrying corporate folk.

It just goes to show that, in a world run by mergers and acquisitions, good talent does not stay independent for long.

[You can find an interesting look inside BitBoys, from back in 2002, here]