Lorne Trottier founded Matrox in 1976 in Dorval, Quebec, and the company developed a series of graphics adapters that became standard in professional and industrial settings. Trottier, who earned a master's degree in engineering from McGill University in 1973, started the business with friend Branko Matić after securing initial orders for a video RAM product. Early products such as the MTX‑1632 and MTX‑256 provided low‑cost video output for S‑100 bus computers and were promoted in specialty magazines. At the Personal Computing Consumer Trade Fair in August 1976, Matrox demonstrated its hardware to around five thousand attendees, including representatives from Apple and other industry leaders. The ALT‑256, released in 1978, offered a 256 by 256 dot raster and was adopted for NASA Viking mission ground control displays. In 1979 the company began selling the Quad Video to financial system integrators on Wall Street. By 1979 Matrox employed fifty people and reported 200% annual growth. The 1986 US Army contract for the Electronic Information Delivery System (EIDS) was worth approximately $72 million and required Matrox to integrate video simulation, frame grabbing, and digital audio on a single add‑in card. Subsequent products included the PG‑1281 (1987), which provided up to 1.5 MB of VRAM and supported 1280 by 1024 resolution, and the SM‑640 (1987), the first 3D accelerator using a Geometry Engine. In the early 1990s Matrox introduced MGA‑based cards such as the Ultima and Impression, which offered up to 3 MB of VRAM and XVGA support. The Millenium (1995) established a standard for 2D image quality and Windows GUI acceleration, supporting up to 8 MB of WRAM and OpenGL. The Mystique (1996) targeted the consumer market with 256 million perspective‑correct textured pixels per second and included bundled games. The Millennium II (1997) added PCI and AGP versions with up to 16 MB of WRAM and four‑monitor support. The G400 series (1999) featured DDR SDRAM and a 250 nm to 180 nm die shrink, while the Parhelia (2002) provided four monitor outputs and a maximum resolution of 3840 by 1024. In 2004 Matrox released the QIP LP PCIe, the industry’s first PCIe x16 graphics card. The company continued to develop embedded graphics chips and specialized adapters, and in September 2014 introduced the C680 and C420 models based on AMD’s Cape Verde architecture. Lorne Trottier acquired 100% of Matrox in September 2019, and Zebra Technologies purchased the Matrox Imaging division in June 2022. In Spring 2023 Matrox launched the Luma series, which supports up to two 8K displays at 60 Hz and is intended for industrial, digital signage, and medical applications. Matrox remains active in specialized display and imaging markets as of 2025.