The Making Of X-Fi |
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Many people believe that designing a chip is primarily a scientific and technical endeavor. Without doubt science and technology
play a leading role in the implementation of the design goals, however how do you define those design goals in the first place?
When a chip architecture takes anywhere from 3 to 5 years from first meeting to final production, how do you know what the
market requirements will be so far into the future? It is obvious therefore that
the most important talent required for
successful chip design is being able to accurately predict future user's needs! With the pace of the PC industry it is
extremely difficult to know where the market will be, what users will be doing with their PCs and what features application
developers will be delivering in their software. This is why
Creative is unique in both its ability and commitment to driving
audio design (in the PC and beyond) to new levels through the most innovative chip designs.
We have proven this over the last 20 years and here we are again on the cusp of yet another tremendous leap forward
in audio performance and functionality.
In this section, we will take a short journey back in time and show you the path to X-Fi today. We will tell you how we set the
X-Fi design goals, what the design goals were, and what tools and techniques we employed to realize X-Fi.
