ATI already shipping PCI Express chipsets for AMD K8

Although ATI Technologies has not yet announced its PCIe desktop chipsets, the company has already begun shipping the products, according to statements made by David Orton, ATI's chief executive officer (CEO), during ATI's fiscal-fourth-quarter conference call. ATI has not announced the product yet since the company wants to "show it in the results," Orton explained. ATI is happy with the initial customer reception on both the AMD and Intel platform, he added. The company is expected to make the formal announcement that it is shipping PCIe chipsets in volume later this month.

ATI is the first company to ship PCIe-enabled core-logic chipsets for the AMD K8 platform, and this will be its first chipset offering for an AMD processor platform. The company is offering two K8 chipsets, the RX480 discrete chipset, and the RX480 integrated part. ATI will also launch the RS400 integrated chipset for Intel's Pentium 4 platform. The integrated graphics will support DirectX 9.0. The chips will be manufactured using a 0.13-micron process at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), according to Reuven Soraya, director of platform product marketing at ATI. The company will use 0.11-micron processes by the end of the year, stated Orton.

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