"Will ATI Be Broken Up?"

[Shtal]

I hope AMD doesn't make the mistake of getting rid of ATI's high-end chips. Maybe we can all sign a petition, "Save ATI Graphics!".

Back in 2000 when ATI bought ArtX team to design next generation GPU's because ATI had no choice in order to survive; they (ATI) spend all their money on R300 chip (Radeon 9700). If R300 were failure then ATI would be out of business, but nobody suspected even ATI themselves didn't realize how R300 was very successful chip that made ATI live even now.
And you think ATI went down so easily without a fight to survive/live and sold to slavery for/to AMD. I don't think so - they ATI probably had aggrement of some kind with AMD so they (ATI people red color now green color) continue make high end chips.

 

[R300King!]

Back in 2000 when ATI bought ArtX team to design next generation GPU's because ATI had no choice in order to survive; they (ATI) spend all their money on R300 chip (Radeon 9700). If R300 were failure then ATI would be out of business, but nobody suspected even ATI themselves didn't realize how R300 was very successful chip that made ATI live even now.
And you think ATI went down so easily without a fight to survive/live and sold to slavery for/to AMD. I don't think so - they ATI probably had aggrement of some kind with AMD so they (ATI people red color now green color) continue make high end chips.

Yes, my friend, that's exactly what I'm saying. It's not like the old days when ATI had the vision to excel in the video card market. They feel a little more pressure nowdays, or perhaps they grew tiresome, who knows? Yeah, ATI had an agreement with AMD alright, the offer was right for the right people, now it's history. What else is there to say?

 

[satein]

Sorry, where is the brand killed?

Probably, there is Xbitlabs now posting this news already...
New AMD May Withdraw from Discrete GPU Business – Analyst. Analyst Sees No Future for ATI’s Discrete GPUs

and some quote from that report...

The analyst believes that the market share for ATI Radeon discrete graphics processing units (GPUs) will be limited to the market share of AMD’s own microprocessors, thus, will not be really large.

“The discrete GPU business working from within AMD will be at a disadvantage to Nvidia and other independent GPU suppliers. ‘AMD’ GPUs will be very closely tied to AMD platforms and limited in the amount of traction they will be able to gain on Intel-based systems,â€￾ Mr. Freedman claims.

 

[Shtal]

Yes, my friend, that's exactly what I'm saying. It's not like the old days when ATI had the vision to excel in the video card market. They feel a little more pressure nowdays, or perhaps they grew tiresome, who knows? Yeah, ATI had an agreement with AMD alright, the offer was right for the right people, now it's history. What else is there to say?

You cannot compare ATI to 3dfx.... if so Nvidia is next! - by Intel - maybe who knows.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Probably, there is Xbitlabs now posting this news already...
New AMD May Withdraw from Discrete GPU Business – Analyst. Analyst Sees No Future for ATI’s Discrete GPUs

How come I think Dave might have a slightly better idea about what is going on that Xbit Labs right now?

 

[dizietsma]

My thinking on the matter is that AMD will be making gpu's or gpu/cpu hybrids in their FAB's come 2008/9 onwards. Considering at that time they will be well on their way to having 3 FABs in the USA and Germany then it may well depend on how successful the cpu part is doing against Intel on whether the discrete high end gpu part is spun off.

If AMD is capacity constrained rather than go back to TSMC they might float off the high end, if they are not doing so well then they might use one part of a plant making money on the discrete gpu's. Is that too simplistic do you think ?

 

[satein]

How come I think Dave might have a slightly better idea about what is going on that Xbit Labs right now?

I excatly agree with you. Dave would be the right people to know best about this thing. The reason I posted that is to let all you know what other may be thinking about it.

It seems like the AMD/ATi will need sometime to prove of what are they going to go... I bet it would be good in either way as I don't want my lastest FireGL lappy to leave alone without additional support

Edit: Typo...

 

[_xxx_]

Sorry, where is the brand killed?

Here:

<brand>

Now seriously, only the higher management knows what's planned for the next few years, all that comes through to the "minor" employees is rumours and bits and pieces. Noone can "know" this stuff in any company (except maybe the CEO's secretaries...).

 

[Gubbi]

Why would they kill off the ATI brand ? It's a long established brand with high performance and high quality products. It's one of only two brands in the world that are synonymous with high performance graphics.

Killing it off and rebranding it as something else (AMD) would make little sense.

What would make sense is for AMD to establish a new brand to compete with Centrino in the laptop market. Fusion seems perfectly positioned for this.

Cheers

 

[^M^]

It would not be unheard of that a corporation kill a successfull niche brand to expand a more generic and (assumely more powerful) brand.

IIRC the ATI brand will be replaced by AMD for non discrete graphic products.
So we have a Radeon brand used for all graphic centrics products (IGP and GPU), sometime with AMD (IGP), sometime with ATI(GPU).
And an ATI brand for discrete graphic cards only which is always combined with the Radeon brand.

Yesterday you had several ATI products (Xpress, Avivo ...), Radeon was only one of them.
Today the hierarchy is upside down, ATI is a subset of the Radeon brand (discrete products).

All that seems a bit messy and redondant, I highly anticipate some changes, but that's only my opinion and I won't repeat it at nauseam.

I'm not sure I'm very clear, I can do betterin French if you want.

 

[INKster]

Why would they kill off the ATI brand ? It's a long established brand with high performance and high quality products. It's one of only two brands in the world that are synonymous with high performance graphics.

Killing it off and rebranding it as something else (AMD) would make little sense.

What would make sense is for AMD to establish a new brand to compete with Centrino in the laptop market. Fusion seems perfectly positioned for this.

Cheers

There's one thing that prevents that for the time being.
Even with purchasing ATI, AMD is still left without own-brand wireless chipsets.
Centrino is a CPU + Chipset/GPU + Wireless solution.

So either AMD designs one from scratch, or it will have to continue to rely on 3rd parties.

 

[Dave Baumann]

So we have a Radeon brand used for all graphic centrics products (IGP and GPU), sometime with AMD (IGP), sometime with ATI(GPU).
And an ATI brand for discrete graphic cards only which is always combined with the Radeon brand.

Personally, I think its the other way around. I wouldn't bet the chipset products will continue to use Radeon - at the moment the plan is to tag them "...with ATI graphics", or something similar.

 

[Dave Baumann]

I excatly agree with you. Dave would be the right people to know best about this thing. The reason I posted that is to let all you know what other may be thinking about it.

At the moment people are reacting to the ex-ATI website turning green and the obvious removal of the ATI company name / logo for the AMD company logo - yes, ATI's logo has been relegated from a company logo to a brand logo for the time being. However, the AMD website give an outline of where the branding exists - for instance, ATI Radeon, ATI Crossfire and ATI Mobility Radeon exist, while embedded products such as handheld and DTV are rebranded as AMD solutions.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Theatre Pro and such still gonna be ATi or AMD?

 

[SugarCoat]

Back in 2000 when ATI bought ArtX team to design next generation GPU's because ATI had no choice in order to survive; they (ATI) spend all their money on R300 chip (Radeon 9700). If R300 were failure then ATI would be out of business, but nobody suspected even ATI themselves didn't realize how R300 was very successful chip that made ATI live even now.
And you think ATI went down so easily without a fight to survive/live and sold to slavery for/to AMD. I don't think so - they ATI probably had aggrement of some kind with AMD so they (ATI people red color now green color) continue make high end chips.

Actually you're totally wrong. ATI made a name for itself in enthusiast and gamers computers as the best choice for performance with the R300 but they almost certainly wouldnt of gone under if it was more of the same. It took a BIG failure on the part of Nvidia to let ATI get that foothold, they couldnt of planned it better if they tried. ATI up to that point had been a functioning company since the 1980s, you think they needed the R300 super success to survive? ArtX, in my opinion, was primarily acquisitioned for a way to allow ATI to get into the lucrative console GPU business, not primarily to bust nVidias nuts and become the best choice for gamers 3D graphics for just over the next year.

And i'm sorry but ATIs existance in the enthusiast graphics market is now not a matter of IF they will basically cease to exist, but a matter of when. Anyone who thinks otherwise is living a delusion. I'll be pretty damn surprised if they're still around in the enthusiast market in 5 years. Personally i dont think AMD has the hundreds of millions lying around for R&D to just throw at ATI in a division of generally poor returns. Their main focus will be to reconquer Intel in CPU performance and sell hundreds of thousands if not millions of processors, not to please the few thousand that dump their chequing (or checking if you prefer) account once in awhile for the next best thing. Not to mention it can even be argued that AMD, a company that needs to count its pennies, shouldnt be spending money in an area that can totally fail on a yearly basis. Enthusiast graphics has always been a "by the seat of your pants" sort of thing when it comes to making money and selling products. This is the aftermath of the combining of the two companies. They arent seperate in what they make and spend, a loss to one division means the entire COMPANY takes the hit, and AMD is king, and right now the King wants processors.

I dont think we'll notice anything happen though until current completed R&D, IE projects mostly finished such as the R600 series and refreshes and problably the R700 series, is totally spent. Then we may very well see AMD axe it.

 

[INKster]

I can picture Jen-Hsun Huang with an evil smile on his face, after AMD finally whispers to him:

"The world (of discrete GPU's) is yours !!"


Meanwhile, i can already see $1000+ single-GPU cards, given the predictable lack of competition.
Maybe Intel can change that.

 

[Shtal]

you think they needed the R300 super success to survive? ArtX, in my opinion, was primarily acquisitioned for a way to allow ATI to get into the lucrative console GPU business, not primarily to bust nVidias nuts and become the best choice for gamers 3D graphics for just over the next year.

You would be correct they did not needed R300 to survive; origin tech for Radeon was R100/R200 which was very competitive with Geforce 1-2 and 3 until Nvidia release Geforce4 series. ATI needed something more aggressive to compete with Nvidia.

Since R300 took all of "ATI bank saving money" ATI was very depended on success for R300. ATI did not had more savings in their bank account if R300 would turn bad GPU. ATI took a big risk/money/effort/resources with such complex R300 GPU back in 2000-2002 time frame.

If ATI was trying to make GPU to be competitive with Geforce4 and failed no problem; but since ATI was working beyond performance of Nvidia GF4, then it requires more money.

 

[Shtal]

I still believe AMD will continue making ATI GPU's

Such as R600/R650/R680/R700/R750/R780.
Maybe by then - late Q4 2008 or early Q1 2009 they may quit making High End GPU's.

 

[satein]

I would like to let you know that now the INQ post the interview of 2 AMD CTO (Phil and Bob) here...
AMD reveals its future plans

Some answer on the Intel chipset...

Bob "Short-term, we are going to continue to offer ATI integrated chipsets for Intel processors. Long-term, we will have to assess our business strategy and talk to our partners and to Intel, to see is it financially feasible to continue to offer products for other processors. Technologically wise, there would not be any problems, only open question is the one of receiving future products (for development) from competing companies."

and on the graphic products...

Bob "Other things that are important to appreciate are that we learned how by joining together, we can increase our efforts on all sides and those efforts continue. We did not stop with our development, we didn't wait to figure out what we will do now, and we're one company. We are executing for the DirectX 10, making sure they have the best processors, best chipsets, and best graphics. In the short term, you'll see more solutions that are focusing on integration, but largely we will continue to make the best graphics processors we can, and the microprocessor group will make the best CPUs they can.

In the longer term, I think that you will see pre-set situation is changing and how the computing is changing, evolving - there will be more flexible solutions. But in the short run, we will gain the knowledge and expertise that AMD has for high-speed compute and we will introduce AMD to be able to do integration of parallelism and stream computing."

There will be 5 parts in the set, and the other 4 will follow in the next day...

Edit: Typo..

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

As someone said in another thread, there's no more reason for AMD to give up on high end GPUs than there is for them to give up on high end CPUs. They want to compete with Intel, provide a complete platform, and that includes the best of class high end technology that they can then trickle down into lower market segments, and that will (by the next year) become the mid and low end solutions. Whether that's with CPUs, GPUs, or Fusion is irrelevant - they are in all three business segments now.