VESA 2.0 was introduced in the early 1990's. Many graphics accelerators were starting to appear in the marketplace. Imagine was launched by Number Nine as the first 128 bit graphics accelerator and Imagine II would follow with the first affordable 3D in a desktop chip. Accelerators were able to reach resolutions of 1600x1200 or more, however, each one had it's own register set and most were secret.

To correct this, VESA VBE was introduced which opened up a set of standard BIOS extensions which allowed applications to map graphics into a linear framebuffer at up to 32bpp color.

Silicon Spectrum Supports VESA VBE 2.0 at up to 1600x1200 with our VESA IP which includes:

• Host Interface (PCI or PCIe)
• 32 bit (64 optional) DDR2 memory controller at up to 200Mhz
• CRT controller
• VGA controller
• VESA Layer