PROFILE


Today, Matrox Imaging’s


portfolio includes frame grabbers, smart cameras, and software libraries


At the interface between microprocessors and video


This year saw Matrox celebrate its 45th anniversary. Greg Blackman speaks to co- founder Lorne Trottier about the imaging firm’s history


I


n 1986, Matrox Imaging demonstrated a device able to run 3 x 3 convolutions on a 640 x 480-pixel image in real time


using a graphics chip. Tis was the first PC- based image processing accelerator, and it was ‘unheard of in our industry back then,’ recalled Sam Lopez, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Matrox Imaging. Te device came about thanks to Matrox


co-founder Lorne Trottier’s experience with graphics cards. He came up with the idea of using a graphics engine in reverse to drive memory, and using the chip to run convolutions and histograms and implement image processing algorithms. CPUs in PCs were extremely slow in 1986, and here was a vision engine that didn’t rely on the host CPU for processing. ‘Tat’s what I like doing, looking at


technology and figuring out how to apply it,’


Trottier told Imaging and Machine Vision Europe. ‘We were already kind of into image processing, so we knew about needs for image processing. I knew about this particular graphics chip, so I figured out that I can use it for image processing. ‘Tat’s the kind of thing our creative people


do at Matrox all the time,’ he added. ‘Tat’s what’s fun about this, there’s always new technology coming out and more difficult problems to solve, and figuring out how to use that technology in clever ways to solve those problems is what we thrive at here at Matrox.’ Te MVP-AT accelerator – which was used


by Nasa in the early 1990s, for instance, in a satellite data analysis package called PC- Seapak – is just one example of the pioneering work done at Matrox. Trottier and his co-founder started the


company in 1976, in the early days of the microprocessor. Te idea was to build an interface between microprocessors and video. ‘Te bidirectional in and out of the microprocessor was the core idea that started the company off, and has been a theme throughout its history,’ Trottier said. Matrox’s first product was called Video


RAM, a controller for a microprocessor to display computer-generated alphanumeric data. It was called Video RAM because the ACSII text, the binary code for characters, was mapped to memory.


10 IMAGING AND MACHINE VISION EUROPE DECEMBER 2021/JANUARY 2022 ‘You didn’t have to know anything about


video,’ Trottier explained. ‘If you knew about RAM you could connect the RAM to your microprocessor, and as soon as you used ACSII text it was displayed automatically.’ Years later a different Video RAM


technology was developed for graphics cards. At one point, Trottier got a call from the president of Micron asking about Matrox’s Video RAM to see if Trottier could help out in a patent dispute Micron was having with Texas Instruments over VRAM. ‘I told him that the only similarity between our VRAM and the one you’re talking about is the name,’ Trottier said. Matrox began life very much as a personal


project between the two founders. Te company’s first phone line was installed in the Trottier family home, with Lorne’s mother acting as receptionist. Two months after Matrox’s founding, Trottier visited a computer trade show in Atlantic City in July 1976, collecting data sheets from a number of small start-ups in the early personal computer space, among them a datasheet from the Apple I, which he still has in his archives. Its pioneering spirit led Matrox to develop


some of the earliest frame grabbers, a foundation that is in evidence today – Matrox still makes frame grabbers. ‘Exactly when image processing started [for Matrox] is hard to say,’ Trottier said. Te first frame grabber


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