Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp. said Tuesday it has agreed to acquire Portable Graphics Inc., based in Austin, Texas. A PGI spokesman said the acquisition would make Salt Lake City-based E&S one of the leading suppliers of GL-based software development tools.
Price was not disclosed.The spokesman said the tools allow applications developed in Silicon Graphic's IRIS GL pro-gram-ming interface to run on a variety of workstations.
The acquisition agreement follows a round of announcements by Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM and Sun Microsystems "that position E&S as the primary supplier of high-performance 3D graphics hardware."
PGI is a software company that develops and markets GL-related libraries and tool kits for developing 3D graphics applications on a variety of hardware platforms. Operating as an independent company since October 1992, it supplies products that run on a wide variety of workstation platforms.
PGI's flagship product is NPGL, and IRIS GL 4.0 software-compatible library for HP, IBM, Sun, DEC and DEC/Kubota workstations. PGI is currently working on OpenGL products and is also a supplier of the Inventor application tool kit. PGI will remain headquartered in Austin and will continue to operate as an independent business.
"Evans & Sutherland is moving aggressively into the 3D graphics hardware and software business as a third-party supplier," said Lloyd Turner, president of the Design Systems Division of E&S.