Matrox is back... collaborating with Nvidia?

Matrox was one of the big players in the discrete gaming GPU arena, together with Nvidia, Ati and 3dfx back in the early 2000s. The Canadian company managed to make a name for itself by being the first to deliver hardware accelerated bump mapping techniques and support for multiple monitors, but was also notorious for buggy drivers. With Nvidia and Ati taking over most of the gaming sector, Matrox was gradually forced to focus on the professional and enterprise markets and remained in the shadows ever since the mid-2000s, with little to no publicity released on the usual media channels. Still, the company appears to be alive and kicking, as it recently announced that it is developing a new GPU in collaboration with Nvidia - a long-time competitor in the professional GPU sector.

Could we actually see increased competition on the discrete gaming GPU market from resurging brands like Intel and Matrox this year? Not really, at least not from Matrox, as the company’s joint venture with Nvidia is targeting multi-display ultrahigh-resolution video walls for commercial spaces. Nvidia will provide a custom Quadro embedded GPU and combine it with the Matrox unparalleled support for up to four 4K displays per single-slot card. This also includes the advanced HDCP playback features and the PowerDesk desktop management tools from Matrox. Thanks to the single-slot design, OEMs and AV installers can include up to 4 cards per system, enabling support for up to 16x 4K displays.

No pricing or availability info for now, yet Matrox is at least getting some well-deserved spotlight time with this "historic collaboration."