S3 Graphics today announced a new licensing agreement with Nintendo, licensing its S3 Texture Compression (S3TC) technology, a group of texture compression algorithms developed and patented by S3 Graphics, Ltd. The license agreement today extends the parties’ relationship, which began over 10 years ago.

S3TC texture compression uses an advanced compression algorithm that achieves up to six-fold compression of complex textures and images that are used in today’s hardware accelerated gaming titles. This reduces memory bandwidth and expands the amount of texture imagery that can be stored and processed through onboard graphics memory, without compromising visual clarity.