ATI to reinvigorate chipset market?
By Brooke Crothers
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
April 26, 1999, 5:10 p.m. PT
ATI, the leading graphics chipmaker, unveiled a program to bring out a graphics chip which combines a key PC system chip,
mirroring Intel's strategy for low-cost PCs, and a likely resurgence of the system-chip market.
ATI Technologies, which supplies graphics chips to many of the largest PC makers, said today that it plans to combine graphics with a
key part of the PC chipset.
Analysts say this is more of a proclamation rather than anything concrete. "This is the graphics guys saying they're getting into [the
chipset] space," said Dean McCarron, a principal at Mercury Research, a marketing research firm.
The chipset is a companion to the main processor. To date, the main processor, the chipset, and graphics have all been discrete
components in a PC. But now chipmakers are all rushing to combine the chipset with graphics, leading to a revival of the chipset
business, according to McCarron.
Because of Intel's entry into the chipset business in earnest about five years ago the chipset industry was reduced from dozens of players
to a precious few. However, since graphics chip manufacturers such as ATI, S3, and Trident Microsystems--and likely many more--want
to combine the chipset, a renaissance of the chipset market may ensue, he said.
"The chipset industry hit rock bottom [because of Intel's dominance], but now the pendulum is swinging back in the other direction," he
said.
"For the graphics guys, it's a matter of survival [to get into the chipset business]," he said.
Moreover, existing chipset vendors are coming at it from the opposite direction. Companies such as SiS
and Via are now integrating graphics features into their chipsets, as is Intel, which announced its 810
chipset today.
McCarron says SiS chipsets with combined graphics have been designed into consumer PCs from
Compaq Computer, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM.
The ATI architecture, like other designs, steals some of the computer's main memory for graphics to save
costs--referred to by ATI as Shared Memory Architecture, or SMA.
"By providing technology that previously required two discrete chips and following a shared-memory
approach, ATI will offer PC [makers] dramatic cost reductions for low-end systems," ATI stated in a
release.
"ATI's products will [work with] with Pentium II and Pentium III microprocessors as well as other processors," ATI stated.
ATI says this will provide an avenue into the very-low-cost PC market and consumer appliance space. The company said its product will
be used in sub-$500 and sub-$800 systems.
ATI did not announce any specific products and did not disclose if it is partnering with any specific graphics chip maker. |
