VIA this week was spotted at the Las Vegas Convention Center showing off its upcoming S3 Graphics Chrome 5400E x2, a dual-GPU add-in board "aimed at advanced, multi-display digital signage applications."

The 5400E x2 comes ready to support up to 8 simultaneous displays with up to 4 independent video streams at resolutions of up to 1080p. A wide variety of display modes are supported, including Span, Extended, and Clone view configurations. Other marketing bullets include H.264, VC-1, and WMV-HD hardware acceleration, and built-in Genlock support for synchronized source timing.

"VIA is delighted to work with S3 Graphics to bring unique digital signage embedded products to market, highlighting our prowess in delivering the very best in power-efficient, hi-def digital display technologies," said Daniel Wu, VP, VIA Embedded Platform Division, VIA Technologies.

VIA says it will have samples of the Chrome 5400E x2 available to ODM customers starting in Q2 2010.

Try to imagine where 3D gaming would be today if not for the graphics processing unit, or GPU. Without it, you wouldn't be tredging through the jungles of Crysis in all its visual splendor, nor would you be fending off endless hordes of fast-moving zombies at high resolutions. For that to happen, it takes a highly specialized chip designed for parallel processing to pull off the kinds of games you see today, the same ones that wouldn't be possible on a CPU alone. Going forward, GPU makers will try to extend the reliance on videocards to also include physics processing, video encoding/decoding, and other tasks that where once handled by the CPU.

It's pretty amazing when you think about how far graphics technology has come. To help you do that, we're going to take a look back at every major GPU release since the infancy of 3D graphics. Join us as we travel back in time and relive releases like 3dfx's Voodoo3 and S3's ViRGE lineup. This is one nostalgiac ride you don't want to miss!

It all starts after the jump!