Nvidia and hardware T&L

PlanetRiva interviews Michael Hara about their announced hardware transformation and lighting technology. Nothing concrete yet on what we call the "NV10" though. Still, here's a bit on what hardware T&L will do:

Transformation and Lighting are the first two of the four major steps (triangle setup and rendering being the final two) in the 3D graphics pipeline, or series of steps required to produce 3D graphics.  Both steps are mathematically intensive and very specific in the mathematics they require. <snip> Dedicated transformation and lighting will have the same impact as filtering did for pixels, but much bigger.  Software transformation and lighting done by the host CPU today is the biggest bottleneck that has forced software developers to limit the geometric complexity and lighting sophistication of their 3D characters and environments.