IBM 8514/A


The IBM 8514/A is a graphics card manufactured by IBM and introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of personal computers in 1987. It supports a display resolution of pixels with 256 colors at 43.5 Hz, or at 60 Hz. IBM sold the companion CRT monitor which carries the designation, 8514.
The 8514/A uses a standardised API called the "Adapter Interface" or AI. This interface is also used by XGA, IBM Image Adapter/A, and clones of the 8514/A and XGA such as the ATI Technologies Mach series and IIT AGX. The interface allows computer software to offload common 2D-drawing operations onto the 8514/A hardware. This frees the host CPU for other tasks, and greatly improves the speed of redrawing a graphics visual.
The 8514/A initially sold for $1290 for the adapter and $270 for the 512KB memory expansion. The 8514/A required a Micro Channel architecture bus at a time when ISA systems were standard.

History

The 8514/A was introduced with the IBM PS/2 computers in April 1987. It was an optional upgrade to the Micro Channel architecture based PS/2's Video Graphics Array, and was delivered within three months of PS/2's introduction.
Although not the first PC video card to support hardware acceleration, IBM's 8514/A is often credited as the first PC mass-market fixed-function accelerator. Up until the 8514/A's introduction, PC graphics acceleration was relegated to expensive workstation-class, graphics coprocessor boards. Coprocessor boards were designed around special CPU or digital signal processor chips which were programmable. Fixed-function accelerators, such as the 8514/A, sacrificed programmability for better cost/performance ratio.
The ATI Mach 8 and Mach 32 chips were popular clones, and several companies designed graphics accelerator chips which were not register compatible but were conceptually very similar to the 8514/A.
The 8514/A was superseded by IBM XGA.
The VESA Group introduced a common standardized way to access features like hardware cursors, Bit Block transfers, off screen sprites, hardware panning, drawing and other functions with VBE/accelerator functions (VBE/AF) in August 1996.

Software support

Software that supported this graphic standard:

Output capabilities

The 8514/A offered:
  • ' graphics with 256 colors out of 262,144 ; text mode with 80×34 characters;
  • ' graphics with 256 colors out of 262,144 ; text mode with 85×38 or 146×51 characters;
Latter clone board offered additional resolutions:

Clones

In the late 1980s, several companies cloned the 8514/A often for the ISA bus. Notable among those was Western Digital Imaging's PWGA-1, the Chips & Technologies 82C480, and ATI's Mach8 and later Mach32 chips. In one way or another, the clones were all better than the original with more speed, enhanced drawing functionality and overall improved video mode selections. Clone support for non-interlaced modes at resolutions like 800×600 and 1280×1024 was typical, and all clones had longer command queues for increased performance.