ATI engineering must be under alot of strain. MS funding?

[Megadrive1988]

With ATI developing so many chips
(R420/Loki, R500, Nintendo GPU, XBox2, maybe GBA2 GPU etc)

you'd think their engineering teams would be under alot of strain, and R&D costs must be going through the roof.

Since MS/ATI has now revealed to the world that ATI will be doing XBOX 2 graphics, and ATI at the same time is still very much at war with Nvidia for the highend PC graphics.... how much funding do you think ATI is getting from MS?

can ATI take on both console projects AND PC graphics (and everything else) ?

sorry if this isnt the forum for these questions, it has somewhat to do with the consoles ATI is doing graphics for, but it still could effect the PC and has to do with 3D-tech overall.

btw, the ArtX & Real3D acquisitions ATI made, have obviously allowed them to gain both console contracts as well as unseat Nvidia from the PC throne.

 

[reever]

I believe ATI has more employees than Nvidia and have already stated that they already had teams working on future VPU's so a couple more wouldn't hurt i would think

 

[Vince]

I believe ATI has more employees than Nvidia

nVidia's corperate structure is also more vertical than ATIs, such a comparison isn't sustainable. In fact, I don't know the numbers, but if their close this comperason wouldn't be in ATIs favor.

EDIT: This post has been Russ-isized.

 

[RussSchultz]

Too many stated NVIDIA statements in that statement.

 

[kemosabe]

Re: ATI engineering must be under alot of strain. MS funding

With ATI developing so many chips
(R420/Loki, R500, Nintendo GPU, XBox2, maybe GBA2 GPU etc)

you'd think their engineering teams would be under alot of strain, and R&D costs must be going through the roof.

Since MS/ATI has now revealed to the world that ATI will be doing XBOX 2 graphics, and ATI at the same time is still very much at war with Nvidia for the highend PC graphics.... how much funding do you think ATI is getting from MS?

can ATI take on both console projects AND PC graphics (and everything else) ?

sorry if this isnt the forum for these questions, it has somewhat to do with the consoles ATI is doing graphics for, but it still could effect the PC and has to do with 3D-tech overall.

btw, the ArtX & Real3D acquisitions ATI made, have obviously allowed them to gain both console contracts as well as unseat Nvidia from the PC throne.

Listen to Dave Rolston's (VP engineering) response to a very similar query at 29:40 of this afternoon's webcast (you will have to take a few seconds to register): http://secure.wilink.com/asp/redire...eight=420&capture=true&playerID=1&urlID=82006

 

[digitalwanderer]

Too many stated NVIDIA statements in that statement.

 

[Proteus]

When was it confirmed that they are working on a new Nintendo Console?

And there is no info on Gameboy next stuff..

I don't see how the strain is THAT huge, Nvidia did the same thing a couple of years ago with XBox 1...

 

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

When was it confirmed that they are working on a new Nintendo Console?

And there is no info on Gameboy next stuff..

I don't see how the strain is THAT huge, Nvidia did the same thing a couple of years ago with XBox 1...

Which strained NVIDIA quite a bit!

 

[Megadrive1988]

about the ATI-Nintendo contract:

http://www.ati.com/companyinfo/press/2003/4611.html

Press Release - 2003
ATI Announces Technology Development Agreement with Nintendo

Tuesday March 4, 2003

MARKHAM, Ontario ? ATI Technologies, Inc. (TSX: ATY, NASDAQ: ATYT), a world leader in the design and manufacture of innovative 3D graphics and digital media silicon solutions, announced today that it has entered into a technology development agreement with Nintendo Co., Ltd. Under the agreement, ATI and Nintendo are developing technologies for use in Nintendo products. No other details regarding the nature of this agreement are being made available at this time.

"ATI has had an excellent relationship with Nintendo for many years," said David Orton, President and Chief Operating Officer, ATI Technologies Inc. "We are pleased to enter into this major technology development agreement with Nintendo."

obviously this relates to next-gen Nintendo products. their next game console, and perhaps even the next Gameboy.




Kemosabe,

glad you pointed that out to me, about ATI being confident of being able to shoulder these things. it seems they have prepared themselves for the task of making XGPU-2, the Nintendo GPU, their PC graphics, and other things. I don't know much about how ATI is structured compared to Nvidia
but it seems ATI can learn / has learned from what Nvidia did.

I don't even see WHY making XGPU was so straining on Nvidia, afterall, XGPU was basicly a souped up Nv20 or a cut down Nv25. either way, they were building a PC GPU very much like XGPU. the Nv25 / GF4ti. but it did
strain Nvidia regardless.

personnally, I am glad ATI got the next Xbox contract and hope that nothing goes wrong to prevent an ATI GPU / VPU ended up in it. we all know chip contracts can be broken, and about prototype consoles being designed in parallel...

 

[991060]

I was wondering whether or not the new contract will give ATI more power to "direct" or influence the spec of the next D3D API. Since DX 9.1 spec has been written down (am I right? ), will ATI and M$ co-design DX10 just like what they did for DX9? If so,nvidia will really have a very hard time IMHO,it can compete with ATI, but M$ is too influential in the area.

 

[dominikbehr]

i think you dont quite understand how big ATI is and how many products it makes

so here it is:
discrete desktop, workstation and mobile graphics
integrated desktop and mobile chipsets for intel and amd
multimedia (all in wonder)
game console graphics
handheld and pda graphics http://www.atitech.ca/products/handheld.html
digital tv/set top boxes, pvr, cable (including cpu cores) http://www.atitech.ca/products/dtv.html

1900 employees http://www.atitech.ca/companyinfo/about/index.html
development offices in markham ontario, marlborough ma, santa clara ca, orlando fl, starnberg germany

afaik ati never acquired real3d
they did acqiure: tseng labs, artx, chromatic research, nextwave

 

[PatrickL]

Yes i think the problem is, after reading most of the coments since yesterday, that in a lot of people mind ATI is still a relative small company and just had luck with R300 core.

 

[Arun]

I don't see how the strain is THAT huge, Nvidia did the same thing a couple of years ago with XBox 1...

You can be confident that this is what caused the "NV30 debacle". Nothing went as expected with the NV30, and they didn't have the workforce or budget to correct mistakes fast enough.
So what we got in the end is an architecture with tremendous potential speed, but which is so badly implemented that it's impossible to run it at anywhere near the peak GFLops numbers. Drivers can help, but they'll never be able to really 'fix' this. Just minimize it.


Uttar

 

[cybamerc]

If the original Nintendo pressrelease (which the Xbox pressrelease is obviously based on) isn't enough to convince someone that ATI is working on the next gen Nintendo console then take a look at this comment:

Don't expect the graphics capabilities of future Nintendo and Microsoft products to be exactly the same, however, the ATI spokesman said. "Yes, we have different design teams working on them, with different requirements and different timetables," the spokesman said.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1220430,00.asp

I also wouldn't compare ATI with Nvidia. It took Nvidia several hundred engineers to modify the NV20 core for use in the Xbox while ArtX managed to do Flipper with less than half that (they were 70 people when they became part of ATI).

 

[Qroach]

Art X was also workign on it much longer, and they only provided graphics. Nvidia provided the mother board design, graphics chip and audio... quite a bit mroe work than just the graphics core...

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Art X was also workign on it much longer, and they only provided graphics. Nvidia provided the mother board design, graphics chip and audio... quite a bit mroe work than just the graphics core...

And we don't know what exactly ATI is providing for x-box2...might be exactly like Nintendo: graphics licensing only.

 

[RussSchultz]

Have we actually determined its for the xbox 2 and not for an xbox handheld? (or something similar?)

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

People have this idea that ATI is small because until recently, ATI were not in the spotlight. ATI were massive years ago in the 2D market, but as Nvidia and 3DFX fought over the emerging 3D market, ATI faded into the background in order to keep making money in the OEM world. They really disappeared from the view of the retail public for those few years, only coming back a little before 3DFX self destructed. A lot of people have only heard of ATi as a player in the last few years - they don't know that they were around and making cards long before 3DFX or Nvidia were even formed.

As for X-Box being "too much to handle" you've got to remember that ATI have already been through this once (and succesfully) with Nintendo. Things arn't going to come out and bite them becuase they've never done it before. Nvidia may have had problems with developing console chips, but then they also had problems with going to the .13 process on their GPUs - both of which ATI have already proved they can do with no significant problems.

ATI just seems to be a company with more finesse, rather than a the brute force approach to everything that Nvidia seem to display. I expect this thoughtfulness will see ATI through any issues.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Just some blurbs from the conference presentation above:

ATI stated:

The company has entered into an agreement with Microsoft to participate in future products and services for the X-Box and future X-Box derivatives."

It's a long-term, strategic deal...it's for x-box technologies and things related to that. It's a very strategic deal for ATI.

It's a deal involving development costs and royalties in the future and a deal that involves technology related to x-box activities...it will be up to Microsoft to divulge further details if they choose to.

We have entered into a contract with Nintendo to do additional technology development for Nintendo in the future.

In our current deal with Nintendo, we have hardware and software royalties with Nintendo for the existing GameCube. NEC makes the Nintendo Chips

We should see cell phones with ATI technology in the Fall.

[WRT cell phones, the features we provide] revolve around higher fidelity performance at a lower cost, lower power usage, lower space and being able to integrate capabilities in a number of handheld and mobile environments.

We do intend going forward to have a multiple-foundry strategy as we have now. We will probably not take part of the high end graphics and send it somewhere else (like apparently our competitor).

Our general statement about integrated-- going extremely well

Resource allocation: Can't comment on what nVidia did or didn't do. In this case it's about being able to leverage technology efficiently. (As opposed to getting a new large contract and needed to hire new staff to meet workload.) We've been planning for some time for proper resource allocation to be able to execute on that deal as well as continue on the other things that we're currently pursuing. We have a very braod and deep set of engineers. We already have anticipated this contract and already hired a number of people. Certainly in some key areas we will be picking up various contractors...but we don't see the addition of any large number of resources...won't go on a hiring spree...we'll be leveraging the base that we have. We are really not concerned about the impact on our PC roadmap.

 

[jb]

You can be confident that this is what caused the "NV30 debacle". Nothing went as expected with the NV30, and they didn't have the workforce or budget to correct mistakes fast enough.

Poppycock. I work for a large Consumer electronic company. Every time I have seen a project run into a wall. Management solves it by throwing more people at it. And that almost NEVER helps. You can just take 20 engineers and say go help this team fix their fab issues. What you need is the right engineers to help not just mass numbers something our management still does not seem to understand. Most of the NV30 issues came from too much PR and not enough common sense. It was not a lack of resources....