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Spea Software
Defunct German graphics hardware manufacturer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Spea Software AG was a German computer hardware and software company based in Starnberg, Bavaria. Founded in 1985, the company produced graphics cards for the IBM PC and compatibles. In 1995, Spea Software was acquired by Diamond Multimedia.
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Spea Software AG was founded in Starnberg, Bavaria, in 1985 by Ulrich Seng.[1] The company's name is an acronym standing for Systeme für Professionelle Elektronik und Automation (Systems for Professional Electronics and Automation).[2] The company chiefly produced graphics cards for the IBM PC and compatibless, at first producing ISA cards before branching out to VESA Local Bus and PCI cards in the 1990s.
In 1992, the company went public on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.[3] Some time in the late 1980s or early 1990s, the company established an American subsidiary by the name of Computer Visualization Technologies, Inc. (CVTI), headquartered in Fremont, California.[4] In May 1993, Spea through CVTI acquired Video Seven, a major American graphics cards manufacturer based in Silicon Valley, from LSI Logic. This gave rise to the product line Spea/V7.[5] Simultaneously with the acquisition of Video Seven, Seng stepped down as chairman of Spea.[6]
After encountering difficulty marketing graphics cards under the Spea/V7 brand name, Spea had the Video Seven division shuttered in 1993.[5] Spea themselves continued to sell multimedia peripherals such as sound and graphics cards with the Video Seven trademark into 1995.[7][8] Sales at the company peaked at 174 million DM in 1994.[9] In November 1995, Spea itself was acquired by Diamond Multimedia of the United States.[10]
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Products
Although the company is considered a German graphics card pioneer, the company did not develop graphics chips itself (like Matrox, for example). Instead, it used chipsets from various manufacturers (including S3, Tseng Labs, and Avance Logic) for its graphics and multimedia cards. The drivers were developed by Spea itself.
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References
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