Mum's the word on 3dfx's next architecture, which will be announced at this year's E3 Expo in Los Angeles (May).

We've been piecing together the puzzle just recently towards exposing the next-generation part, and a few things have become apparent:

After talking with personnel from 3dfx and nVidia's principal fabrication plant, it's clear that neither of the two companies will be producing a part manufactured at a .18 micron process before the year 2000.

Instead, the .25 micron process that's currently being utilized for the TNT2 and the Voodoo3 will "refined" downward as the tooling improves towards a goal of .22 or even .21 micron.

What this means is that the amount of transistors in the die itself is limited, although neither the TNT2 or the Voodoo3 is within 60% of the die's maximum transistor amount in their current variations anyway.

According to principal figures at nVidia who are in the know, engineering will become the key ingredient towards developing video accelerators that significantly exceed the current generation's performance levels. An example of this that was given to Sharky Extreme last week concerned multi-texturing, or the ability to make multiple passes over a pixel within a single clock cycle. Most of the current high-level video accelerator chipsets can perform just two passes per clock cycle. But what if the possibility for four or even eight passes per clock cycle was implemented?

Things like 2+ pass multi-texturing were hinted at by both 3dfx and nVidia personnel, along with other options like embedded DRAM and on-board geometry co-processing.

As Sharky Extreme uncovers more information we'll soon be presenting a series or articles on the new technology behind the video accelerators of Christmas 99.