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Ati Technologies Inc. Business Information, Profile, and History

1 Commerce Valley Drive East
Markham
L3T 7X6
Canada

Company Perspectives

From desktops to laptops, workstations to handheld devices, video game consoles to integrated solutions, ATI has established itself as a world leader in the design and manufacture of innovative 3D graphics solutions.

History of Ati Technologies Inc.

Based near Toronto, Canada, ATI Technologies, Inc. is one of the world's largest makers of computer graphic chips and boards. The company divides its business into two units: PC Business and Consumer Business. Serving the PC market with graphics processors has been ATI's focus since the start. The Radeon line of processors are used in desktop computers and workstations, while the Mobility Radeon line offers integrated graphics for notebooks. ATI's Imageon line of graphics processors serves the consumer market, which includes cell phones, set-top boxes for television, and the Nintendo GameCube video game console. ATI maintains research and development facilities in Canada and the United States, manufacturing is done in Taiwan as well as Canada, and sales offices are located throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. ATI is a public company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ.

Founder Immigrates to Canada

The man most responsible for ATI's rise to prominence is cofounder and longtime CEO Kwok Yuan Ho. He was born in China in 1950, the son of a teacher, and grew up in a family where money was tight. Nevertheless, he was able to attend the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, where in 1974 he received a degree in electrical engineering. For the next decade he worked in Hong Kong for electronics companies, including National Semiconductor Corp., Philips Electronics, and Control Data Systems. Ho was involved in a wide range of areas--engineering, quality assurance, manufacturing, purchasing, and general management--providing him with a thorough knowledge of the industry. In October 1983, while on vacation, he paid a visit to Canada and fell in love with Toronto as well as his future wife. A year later he applied for immigrant status, but despite his experience in the technology sector he had a difficult time finding work. As a result, he joined forces with two other recent Hong Kong immigrants, Lee Lau and Benny Lau. They pooled their resources, raised CAD 300,000 in a bank loan, and in August 1985 launched their own company to produce graphics cards, and the graphics chips that powered them, for personal computers. At the time, personal computers used monochrome monitors, but Ho recognized early on that color would soon be coming and that computer graphics would stimulate the sale of PCs to the general public. Ho and his partners initially called the company Array Technology Inc., which soon became Array Technologies Inc. Before the year was out, however, they settled on an abbreviation, ATI Technologies Inc. Ho served as chief executive officer, while Lee Lau would become vice-president of strategic planning and Benny Lau vice-president of product planning.

In October 1985, Ho and his partners used application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) technology to develop a graphic controller, and unveiled the company's first graphics board product. In the first year of operation the company sold about CAD 10 million of these cards. ATI's first major success came in July 1987 with the release of the EGA WONDER and VGA WONDER cards, which were compatible with every computer monitor, graphics interface, and software on the market at the time. The company was soon doing about CAD 60 million in annual sales and billing itself as the largest graphics-board maker in the world. To keep up with its growth, ATI opened a new 35,000-square-foot facility in September 1988. Befitting its status as a major player in the graphics industry, ATI was one of nine video display adapter manufacturers who in 1989 founded the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA), an international body that initially established a standard for 800x600 resolution video displays and went on to establish many other standards related to computer monitors and graphics.

ATI's next major product, released in May 1991, was the ATI Mach8. Available as a chip or a board, it was able to process graphics independent of the computer's CPU (central processing unit). The new product pushed sales to the CAD 100 million level and employment approached 300. More products followed in 1992, including the Mach32, which combined an integrated graphics controller and graphics accelerator in a single chip; and graphics cards for the VESA Local Bus (VLB) and peripheral component interconnect (PCI) slots of a personal computer, which had more of a direct connection to the CPU and therefore sent and received information faster. Also of note in 1992, ATI established a subsidiary in Munich Germany, ATI GmbH.

Difficulties After Going Public

With annual sales in the CAD 230 million range, ATI became a public company in November 1993 and its stock was listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. But the company soon stumbled. When the fiscal year ended August 31, 1994, the company posted its first loss, CAD 2.7 million on sales of CAD 232.3 million. ATI's stock, which had traded around CAD 20, now slipped below CAD 5. To make matters worse, the company had not kept up with changes in chip design, which was now moving from 32-bit to 64-bit technology, allowing the processing of even greater amounts of information and resulting in better and faster graphics, including motion video. It was not until August 1994 that ATI introduced its Mach64 chip along with new graphics boards. To better keep pace with changes in the industry, ATI in 1995 established a 3-D engineering group, which would pay dividends throughout the decade.

ATI returned to profitability in 1995, when it also unveiled an Apple Macintosh-compatible graphics board, the first company in the industry able to serve both PC and Mac platforms. Later in 1995 ATI forged an agreement with United Microelectronics and other partners to build a semiconductor plant in Taiwan.

Innovations continued in 1996. ATI offered the graphics industry's first 3D chip for desktop computers, and later in the year unveiled a 3D chip for the notebook market. In addition, ATI became the first company to release a chip that could display computer graphics on a television, and also developed a video capture card, combining a graphics card with a TV tuner card to permit users to save analog TV signals. In another first, ATI now offered Macintosh PCI-based boards, something that only Apple had produced previously. Also of note, ATI established a European distribution headquarters in Ireland in 1996.

The efforts of the 3-D engineering group resulted in the 1997 release of the Rage Pro line of graphics accelerators. The 3D Rage II + DVD chip was the first graphic accelerator to offer motion compensation DVD software, and ATI became the first to offer hardware support for DVD acceleration and display. Moreover, ATI became the first graphics company that fully supported the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP 2x), a high-speed channel connecting a graphics card to a computer's motherboard to accelerate 3D graphics. As a result of these advances, the company's graphic cards were now standard components in the top ten selling personal computers in the world. In 1997, ATI generated sales of more than CAD 600 million and recorded a net profit of CAD 47.7 million, but 1998 would be even better. Sales almost doubled to CAD 1.15 billion, while net income increased almost fourfold to CAD 168.4 million, as ATI became the top graphics supplier in the world, according to International Data Corporation. ATI released a number of new products in 1998, including the All-in-Wonder Pro, an all-in-one television, video, and graphics upgrade card that could be installed in any Pentium computer with an open PCI slot. But to make sure it maintained its engineering edge ATI acquired the graphics design assets of Tseng Labs, Inc., picking up a 40-person engineering team. Then, in November 1998, it acquired Chromatic Research, Inc., which produced multimedia chips for use in low-end computers, set-top boxes, and other consumer electronics devices. Ho was also recognized in 1998, when he was named Canada's Entrepreneur of the Year.

ATI enjoyed another outstanding year in 1999. Now listed on the NASDAQ in addition to the Toronto Stock Exchange, the company began reporting its results in U.S. dollars. For the year, sales increased by 67 percent over 1998, totaling more than $1.2 billion. Net income improved by 50 percent to nearly $160 million. ATI would not be able to maintain this pace, however. Competition was stiff in the graphics industry, as chip makers spent a great deal of money developing ever more powerful chips. Moreover, Intel and other semiconductor makers were building in graphic capabilities, taking away sales from the low-end of the market. The end result was low prices and thin margins, and an end to the days of geometric increases in sales and profits. In 2000 ATI improved sales to $1.3 billion. ATI also faced increasing pressure from rival Nvidia Corp., now the fastest growing graphics chipmaker in the world. Investors, in typical what-have-you-done-for-me-lately fashion, punished ATI's stock, which lost about half its value.

Declining Market Share

While 2000 was clearly a challenging year, ATI did enjoy some advances. It acquired ArtX, Inc., a major developer of high-performance graphics for computers and appliances. The deal brought with it CEO Dave Orton, who would become ATI's president and chief operating officer. ATI also unveiled its Radeon graphics processor, which gave it entry into the high-end gaming and 3D workstation markets. But 2001 would see ATI surpassed in market share by Nvidia, which proved more nimble at launching new products and winning business from PC manufacturers and game console makers. In addition, Intel chopped away at ATI's share of the graphics market. By the third quarter of 2001, ATI's marketshare was 17 percent, a far cry from the 32 percent share it enjoyed in the halcyon days of 1999, while Nvidia now commanded 31 percent of the market and Intel 26 percent. At the end of 2001, ATI reported a drop in income to $1.04 billion and a net loss of $54.2 million. In a bid to rebound, ATI brought in new executives, and rather than make the add-in boards for its chips, it now licensed its technology to Taiwan board suppliers and returned the focus to chip design. In addition to increasing the budget, ATI established two chip-development teams, whose efforts were staggered to shorten the gap between products. The second team was, in essence, the ArtX R&D group. As a result, a process that once took 14 months now took about nine months.

The balance sheet continued to suffer in 2002, when ATI posted revenues of $1.02 billion and lost another $47.5 million, but its commitment to chips continued and began to bear fruit. In June 2002 the company acquired NxtWave Communications Inc. to expand its set-top chip business. A month later ATI released its Radeon 9700 Pro, the first major product to come from the ArtX design group. The new chip was twice as fast as any other graphic chip on the market, unseating Nvidia, and now became the gold standard for video game consoles. The technology was too costly, however, for most PC buyers, who opted for computers that relied on cheaper chips that integrated graphics with memory control and other functions.

ATI enjoyed greater success in 2003, bouyed by contracts with Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo GameCubes video game consoles. For the year, ATI increased revenues to nearly $1.4 billion and returned to profitability, recording net income of $35.2 million. But ATI's comeback story was marred by accusations by the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) that seven people connected to the company engaged in insider stock trading, including Ho and his wife along with two other ATI executives and their spouses. The charges stemmed from sales of ATI stock in early 2000, at a time when sales were beginning to sag and the company was on the verge of issuing an earnings warning to investors. On the day of that warning, ATI stock lost 42 percent of its value. Ho was under a great deal of pressure to step down, and he even had to use a back door to enter the Toronto hotel for the company's annual shareholder meeting in order to dodge photographers and reporters. But he refused to relinquish his post, expressing confidence that his conduct had been proper and would be judged so by the OSC. He would turn over the CEO role to Orton in June 2004, part of a succession plan that was already in place, but he would retain the chairmanship.

The insider trading case cast a shadow over ATI for years. Finally, in April 2005 a former ATI investor-relations director, Jo-Anne Chang, and her husband agreed to pay a CAD 1.5 million fine and accept a 20-year ban on trading in securities, and a ten-year prohibition on serving as a director or officer at a public company. Several months later, in October 2005, the OSC dismissed the charges against Ho and his wife. With the matter finally behind him, Ho now resigned as ATI's chairman and retired, something he said he had been planning to do since 1999. "I wanted to retire by the time I was 50. I failed," Ho told Canadian Business. "In the last 20 years I owe my family too much. I spent 99% of my time on ATI, ATI and ATI, and the other 1% on my kids and life. Right now, I should spend some time with my family, take care of them, but also take care of a lot of other interests."

Ho left ATI as it continued to battle Nvidia for supremacy in the graphics industry. In 2004 ATI continued to surge, as sales approached $2 billion and net income totaled $204.8 million. Nvidia staged a comback in 2005 by launching a popular dual graphics card, while ATI had nothing comparable to offer for several months. Although sales increased to more than $2.2 billion in 2005, net income plummeted to $16.9 million. ATI enjoyed strong business the first quarter of 2006, but the future would remain competitive and uncertain. Not only would it have to continue to slug it out with Nvidia at the high-end of computer-graphics chips, they both faced increasing competition from giant Intel, which was gaining market share by making performance improvements to its mainstream graphics chips.

Principal Subsidiaries

ATI Technologies (Europe) GmbH; ATI Research, Inc.; ATI Technologies Systems Corp.; ATI Research Silicon Valley Inc.; ATI Technologies Distribution Inc.

Principal Competitors

Creative Technology Ltd.; Intel Corporation; Nvidia Corporation.

Related information about ATI Technologies

, )|
company_slogan = Get In the Game|
foundation = 1985|
location = Markham, Ontario, Canada|
key_people = David E. Orton, CEO|
num_employees = 3,469 (2005)|
industry = Semiconductors|
products = Graphics cards
Graphics processing units
Motherboard chipsets
Video capture cards|
revenue = profit$2.222 Billion USD (2005)|
net_income = profit$16.93 Million USD (2005)|
homepage = www.ati.com

}}
ATI Technologies Inc. (, ) (where ATI is an initialism for Array Technologies Incorporated) is a major designer of graphics processing units and video display cards. Founded in 1985, ATI's headquarters are located in Markham, Ontario, Canada.

As a fabless semiconductor company, ATI conducts research & development of chips in-house, but subcontracts the actual (silicon) manufacturing and graphics-card assembly to third-parties. The production-chain of a chip involves multiple third-parties: the foundry (UMC and TSMC) makes processor wafers, the test-house tests the dies for defects and sorts them based on performance-characterization and the packager seals individual dies in a hardened case. The long lead time between order and delivery, combined with market uncertainty, leads to occasional supply/demand imbalances.

On July 24, 2006, AMD and ATI announced a plan to merge together in a deal valued at US$5.4 billion. www.amd.com/us-en/0,,3715_14197_14198,00.html?redir=goBG01

History

Founded in 1985 by three Chinese immigrants, China-born Kwok Yuen Ho www.ati.com/designpartners/media/bios/kyho.html and Hong Kong-born Benny Lau and Lee Lau. ATI began as an OEM, producing integrated graphics chips for large PC manufacturers like IBM. However, by 1987 it had evolved into an independent graphics card retailer, marketing the EGA Wonder and VGA Wonder graphics cards under its own ATI moniker.

In 1997 ATI acquired Tseng Labs's graphics assets, which included 40 new engineers. In 2000, ATI acquired ArtX, the company that engineered the "Flipper" graphics chip used in the Nintendo GameCube games console. They have also entered an agreement with Nintendo to create the chip for the successor of the GameCube, named Wii. ATI was contracted by Microsoft to create the graphics chip for Microsoft Xbox 360. Later in 2005, ATI acquired Terayon's Cable Modem Silicon Intellectual Property cementing their lead in the consumer digital television market (press release).

Its current President and CEO is David E. Ho remained as Chairman of the Board until he retired on November 22nd, 2005.

As reported earlier, ATI has agreed to merge with AMD for $5.4 billion. If approved, the combined entity will still operate under the AMD name.www.amd.com/us-en/0,,3715_14197_14208,00.html#110649

Products

In addition to developing high-end GPUs (graphics processing unit, something ATI calls a VPU, visual processing unit) for PCs, ATI also designs embedded versions for laptops (called "Mobility Radeon"), PDAs and mobile phones ("Imageon"), integrated motherboards ("Radeon IGP"), set-top boxes ("Xilleon") and other technology-based market segments. Thanks to this diverse portfolio, ATI has been traditionally the dominant player in the OEM and multimedia markets.

Currently ATI is the main competitor of NVIDIA. As of 2004, ATI's flagship product line is the Radeon series of graphics cards which directly compete with those boards using NVIDIA's GeForce GPUs. As of the 3rd quarter of 2004, ATI represented 59% of the discrete graphic card market, while its primary competitor NVIDIA represented only 37%, but the two commonly trade market share majority, for example 2nd quarter had NVIDIA at 50% and ATI at 46%.

As of 2005, ATI has announced that a deal has been struck with CPU and Motherboard manufacturer particularly to Asus and Intel to create onboard 3D Graphics solutions for Intel's new range of motherboards that will be released with their new range of Intel Pentium M-based desktop processors, the Intel Core and Intel Core 2 processors. This ATI solution will effectively end Intel's range of entry-level desktop integrated graphics. However, high-end boards with integrated graphics will still use Intel integrated graphics processors. Major product families are shown below:

  • EGA / VGA Wonder - IBM "EGA/VGA-compatible" display adapters (1987)
  • Mach8 - ATI's first 2D GUI "Windows Accelerator" (IBM 8514/A clone) (1991)
  • Mach32 - VGA-compatible enhanced feature-set 2D GUI accelerator (32bit "true-color" acceleration) (1992)
  • Mach64 - refined 2D GUI accelerator with "motion-video" acceleration (hardware bitmap zoom, YUV->RGB color-conversion) (1994)
  • Rage Series - ATI's first 2D and 3D accelerator chip. The series evolved from rudimentary 3D with 2D GUI acceleration and MPEG-1 capability, to a highly competitive Direct3D 6 accelerator with then "best-in-class" DVD (MPEG2) acceleration. These chips were functionally similar to their desktop counterparts, but had additions such as advanced power management, LCD interfaces, and dual monitor functionality.
  • Radeon Series - Launched in 2000, the Radeon line is ATI's brand for their consumer 3D accelerator add-in cards. The original Radeon DDR was ATI's first DirectX 7 3D accelerator, introducing their first hardware T&L engine. They introduced innovations such as modularized RAM chips, DVD (MPEG2) acceleration, notebook GPU card sockets, and "POWERPLAY" power management technology.
  • ATI CrossFire - This technology was ATI's response to NVIDIA's SLI platform. It allowed, by using a secondary video card and a dual PCI-E motherboard based on an ATI Crossfire-compatible chipset, the ability to combine the power of the two video cards to increase performance through a variety of different rendering options.
  • FireGL - Launched in 2001, following ATI's acquisition of FireGL Graphics from Diamond Multimedia. Workstation CAD/CAM video card, based on the Radeon series.

Console graphics solutions

  • Flipper - The Nintendo GameCube contains a 3D accelerator developed by ArtX, Inc, a company acquired by ATI towards the end of development of the GPU. Innovatively the chip has 3 MB of embedded 1T-SRAM for use as ultra-fast low-latency (6.2 ns) texture and framebuffer/Z-buffer storage allowing 10.4 GB/second bandwidth (extremely fast for the time). Analysis
  • Xenos - Microsoft's Xbox 360 video game console contains a custom graphics chip produced by ATI, known as "R500", "C1", or more often as Xenos. Analysis
  • Hollywood - Nintendo's next-gen gaming console, the Wii, will use a custom GPU by ATI.

Handheld chipsets

  • Imageon - Introduced in 2002 to bring integrated 3D graphics to handhelds, cellphones and Tablet PCs. Current product is the Imageon 2300 which includes 3D engine, MPEG-4 video decoder, JPEG encoding/decoding, and a 2 megapixel camera sub-system processing engine with support for 2 MiB of ultra low-power SDRAM.
  • In May 2006 ATI claimed it had sold over 100 million 'cell phone media co-processors.' Significantly more than rival NVIDIA.

Personal computer platforms & chipsets

Early north bridge parts produced by ATI included the Radeon 320, 340 and 7000. They sold in respectable volumes, but never gained enthusiast support.

In 2003 ATI released the 9100 IGPwww.xbitlabs.com/articles/chipsets/display/ati-igp9100.html, with IXP250 southbridge. Internally, ATI considered it one of their most important product launches.

The Xpress 200/200P is ATI's PCI Express-based Athlon 64 and Pentium 4 motherboard chipset. The chipset supports SATA as well as integrated graphics with DirectX 9.0 support, the first integrated graphics chipset to do so. The graphics is based on an X300 core integrated into the north bridge, with two pixel pipelines operating at a core speed of up to 350 MHz, each one having a single texturing unit.

In 2006, ATI Released the Xpress 3200, a true Crossfire solution.

Operating system drivers

ATI currently provides proprietary drivers for Microsoft Windows XP, Mac OS X, and Linux. In an interview with AMDs Hal Speed it was suggested that AMD were strongly considering open sourcing at least a functional part of the ATI drivers. However, at least until the merger with AMD is complete, ATI have no plans to open source their drivers:

Market trends

ATI was founded in 1985, and in order to survive, initially ended up shipping a lot of basic 2D graphics chips to companies such as Commodore. Each offered enhanced feature sets surpassing IBM's own (EGA and VGA) display adapters. May of 1991 saw the release of the Mach8 product, ATI's first "Windows accelerator" product. (In fact, the Mach8 was feature-enhanced IBM 8514/A-compatible board.) 1992 saw the release of the Mach32 chipset, an evolutionary improvement over its predecessor.

Modern integrated chipsets

But it was probably the Mach64 in 1994, powering the Graphics Xpression and Graphics Pro Turbo, that was ATI's first recognizably modern media chipset.

ATI?s first integrated TV tuner products shipped in 1996, recognizable as the modern All-in-Wonder specification. These featured 3D acceleration powered by ATI's second generation 3D Rage II, 64-bit 2D performance, TV-quality video acceleration, video capture, TV tuner functionality, flicker-free TV-out and stereo TV audio.

However, while ATI had established a reputation for quality multimedia-capable cards popular with OEMs, by the late 1990s consumers began to also expect strong 3D performance, and 3dfx and NVIDIA were delivering. While the basic 16 MiB version sold reasonably well, the improved but delayed 32 MiB version did not, because it lacked 3D acceleration appropriate for its price point. It became clear that if ATI was to survive, the company would have to develop integrated 3D acceleration competitive with the products NVIDIA was designing. But the pixel fillrate looked good only next to S3?s VIRGE cards, which were of very poor quality for the time, and the feature list looked good only next to the workstation type Matrox Mystique.

The 3D Rage Pro, released in 1997, offered an improved fill rate equal to the original 3dfx Voodoo Graphics, and a proper 1.2 M triangle/s hardware setup engine. The Rage Pro sold in volume to OEMs due to its DVD performance and low cost, but was held back by poor drivers. Subsequently ATI learned to better prioritise driver development.

Work on the next-generation 128 GL was helped by the acquisition of the Tseng development team in 1997. Unfortunately, at the time most games ran in 16-bit color modes, where NVIDIA's parts excelled.

The RIVA TNT2 came out with improved clock speeds, and the GL quickly became relegated to ATI's usual position: that of a strong OEM alternative to the market leaders, with outstanding DVD performance, attractive when priced low enough.

The part was updated in April 1999 with the Rage 128 Pro, featuring anisotropic filtering, a better triangle setup engine, and a higher clock rate. However, ATI subsequently demonstrated beta silicon behind closed doors at GDC, and named the product the Radeon 256.

Finally released in 2000, the original Radeon core (R100). NVIDIA's competing GeForce 2 chips had a four pipe design with two raster units per pipeline. Very few 3D applications at the time utilized more than two textures per pixel, and thus the third raster units in the Radeon were seldom utilized.

ATI proved the original Radeon had not been a one-off by following up with the second generation Radeon (R200) core in 2001, marketed as the Radeon 8500. The R200 raster pipeline arrangement matched the design of the NVIDIA's GeForce 2 series with four pipelines with two raster units per pipeline. NVIDIA quickly released GeForce cards with faster clock speeds. NVIDIA's top GeForce 4 Ti cards delivered greater raw power in terms of fill rates, but ATI started to open up a clear quality and shader performance advantage. In fact, many new games in 2005 still supported the DirectX pixel shader 1.4 of the R200, but not the less capable pixel shader 1.3 units of NVIDIA's latter released GeForce 4 chips

Challenging NVIDIA

During this period ATI also began to sell their core chip technology to third-party "Powered by ATI" board manufacturers, directly competing with NVIDIA?s business model. This change suddenly put NVIDIA on the back foot for the first time since the ill-fated NV1 project, to the amazement of the entire industry. Alongside the Radeon 8500 ATI released a die shrink version (RV200) of the original R100 core which was released as the Radeon 7500. This chip had an extremely fast core clockspeed for the time of 290 MHz with all the features of the original Radeon. Left over R100 chips were sold to third-party video card manufacturers and marketed as the Radeon 7200.

The Radeon 8500 proved popular with OEMs, partly because it offered wider motherboard compatibility than NVIDIA's offerings of the period. The 8500 finally established ATI as a serious performance and feature integrated chipset competitor to NVIDIA, in a period when other graphics card companies such as 3dfx were going out of business.

Performance leadership

The Radeon SE/VIVO and Radeon 8500 cards were warning shots for NVIDIA, demonstrating they could not take for granted their dominant market position. 2002 proved to be the decisive year for ATI, with an unexpected introduction of a new Radeon architecture. The third generation Radeon 9700, based on the R300 core, was designed from the ground up for DirectX 9 operation. ATI Radeon 9700 Pro - Delivering as Promised, Anandtech, August 19, 2002. Furthermore, ATI beat NVIDIA?s DirectX 9 chip to market by several months and soundly defeated it in almost every application. CineFX (NV30) Inside, 3DCenter.Org, August 21, 2001.

Mainstream value

From then onwards, the challenge for ATI became holding onto their high-end advantage, while filtering their technology down to the mid and low end of the market, where the greatest volume sales are made.

For the low end, ATI released a new value chip (RV250) based on the Radeon R200 core with half the raster units per pipeline. This DirectX 8.1 capable part competed with NVIDIA's two pipeline, DirectX 7 GeForce 4 MX.

ATI refreshed the 9700 to the 9800 Pro (R350) in 2003, featuring a small and relatively quiet cooling solution.

Gaining market share

In 2004, ATI released the RADEON XPRESS 200 motherboard chipset, intended as a direct competitor to the more established nForce motherboard brand of chipsets from arch rival NVIDIA.

According to data from Mercury Research, ATI Technologies' market share rose by 4 percentage points to 27% in the Q3 2004, while NVIDIA's share dropped 8 points from 23% to 15%. Intel's market share rose 1 point to 39% in the Q3 2004, holding on to the market number one position, although Intel only ships low performance integrated solutions.

In 2005, ATI began shipping the x800 XL PCI-E card, a 110 nm shrink of the x800 core (which originally shipped on a 130 nm low-K process.) This brought 16-pipeline cards closer to the mainstream. The omission of SM 3.0 and FP32 permitted a more compact die size, allowing ATI to price the X800XL lower than comparable NVidia products. The high end Radeon X1800 had been planned for a mid-2005 release, but the chip did not reach the retail market until October 2005. The high end Radeon X1800 managed to maintain parity with the NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX. While the ATI part has a more flexible feature set, the difference in manufacturing cost points to ATI facing near term margin pressure.

On July 21, ATI announced the newest product to the x1000 series, the Radeon X1950. The X1950 will be available on August 23, 2006 and will retail at US$449.

HDCP controversy

In February 2006 allegations were made that ATI was shipping video cards advertised as "HDCP-ready," but which only contained support for HDCP at the VPU level. The actual boards ATI was shipping did not contain HDCP support (and therefore not usable with applications requiring HDCP) www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=851.

References

See also

  • AMD
  • Comparison of ATI Graphics Processing Units
  • Graphics card
  • Graphics processing unit
  • NVIDIA
  • Comparison of NVIDIA Graphics Processing Units
  • Matrox, the other Canadian video graphics card company

Chronology

  • Key Dates
  • 1985 Company is founded.
  • 1993 Company goes public and is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
  • 1999 ATI becomes largest chip maker in world.
  • 2000 ATI is listed on the NASDAQ.
  • 2004 Founder retires.

Additional topics

Company HistoryComputers & Electronics

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