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ATI Technologies Inc. (where ATI is an acronym for Array Technology Industry) is a Canadian manufacturer of graphics cards, graphics chips and graphics processing units for personal computers. Founded in 1985, their main headquarters is located in Markham, Ontario.
Founded by three Hong Kong immigrants, K.Y. Ho, Benny Lau and Lee Lau, it 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 addition to developing high-end GPU's (graphics processing unit, something ATI themselves call VPU for visual processing unit) for PCs, ATI also designs "lite" embedded versions for laptops (called "Mobility Radeon"), PDAs ("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.
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 next generation of GameCube. ATI was contracted by Microsoft to create the graphics chip for Microsoft Xbox 2.
Its current President and CEO is David E. Orton (formerly of ArtX). K.Y. Ho remains as Chairman.
Currently it 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 graphics chips. 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%.
Market trends
For the past several years the GPU market has largely followed a pattern whereby ATI releases a new product and controls the performance market but only for a short period of time. nVidia (or ATI depending on who releases what first) then releases its counter product and thereupon controls the performance market for yet another short period of time, ad infinitum.
In 2000, ATI released the Radeon core, known in later versions as the 7000 and 7500, reflecting its Direct-X 7 compliant features set. The core established a number of minor but notable firsts, such as a complete DX7 bump mapping implementation (emboss, dot product 3 and EMBM), hardware 3D shadows, and a reasonable implementation of many advanced DX8 pixel shader effects. It is fair to say nVidia products of the period delivered greater raw power, but the emphasis on getting shader performance right, was to be an important base from which to develop the next generation Radeon part.
In 2001, ATI released the R200 core, branded not as the Radeon 2 as most people expected, but as the 8500. While it lacked a little in raw power compared to nVidias offerings, it offered impressive visual quality, and strong DX 8.1 shader performance. As usual with ATI products it proved popular with OEMs, partly because it offered wider motherboard compatibility than nVidas offerings of the period. The greatest weakness at launch was driver support, although over time this was considerably improved. The 8500 is notable for the fact it established ATI as a serious competitor to nVidia, in a period when other graphics card companies were going out of business, and provided a platform from which they were able to build upon their image quality and shader advantages.
In 2002, ATI refocused on the consumer gaming market with the introduction of the Radeon 9700, one of the most innovative graphics cards ever released. Being first to market by several months with the first true Direct-X 9 class consumer card, ATI assumed a decisive market lead at the high end, putting Nvidia on the defensive for the first time in several years. At the same time ATI introduced their branded "Catalyst" driver suite, which addressed many of the quality, compatibility, and performance concerns raised about previous driver releases. And a decision was taken for core chip technology to be licensed out to third-party "Powered by ATI" board manufacturers.
In 2003, ATI launched a program called "get in the game" to help game developers optimise their applications for ATI's hardware. NVIDIA's version is called "the way it's meant to be played". At the high end, ATI updated the 9700 to the 9800 Pro. The 9800 Pro with a small and relatively quiet cooling solution, combined with high end performance, rapidly established itself as one of the most popular and best selling enthusiast cards of all time. In the mid range the 9600 was introduced with half the number of pixel pipes of the 9800 Pro. At the low end the 9200 was also introduced, essentially an 8500 clocked 50 MHz lower to improve manufacturing yields. Partly because it could be cooled passively, ATI delivered a manufacturing cost advantage over the previous bottom end favorite - the GeForce 4 MX, placing nVidia under further pressure at the low end of the market. In sum, 2003 was the year ATI started to transition their high end 9700 advantage to the mainstream.
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. The 9700 core finally trickled down into the low end market in the form of the 9550, a cheaper to manufacture .11 nm version of the 9600, clocked down to 250 MHz. The 9550 quickly replaced nVidia's 5200 as the favorite bottom end discrete OEM card, and largely because of this, almost unnoticed ATI completed one of the most surprising turn arounds in recent chip history. According to data from Mercury Research, ATI Technologies market share rose 4% to 27% in the Q3 2004, while nVidias share dropped 8% to 15% from 23%. Intels market share rose 1% to 39% in the Q3 2004, holding on to the market number 1 position, although of course Intel only ship low performance integrated solutions.
In 2005, ATI began shipping the x800 XL PCI-E card, an .11 nm shrink of the x800 core, originally sampled on a .13 nm low-K process. Priced at $100 less than the competing 6800 GT product from nVidia, ATI believe they have once again found a winning balance of performance, features, process technology, and yields. The card runs at 400 MHz, due to the fact a low-K processes not yet perfected for .11 nm etching. The smaller die size, is what enables the competitive pricing. ATI remain confident going forward they have the right blend of features, performance, and manufacturing cost, in their product range.
Products of interest
- Mach64 - Introduced in 1994, one of the first chips capable of smooth playback of MPEG movies without requiring an extra MPEG card. Later evolved into the 3D RAGE and 3D RAGE II, which included rudimentary 3D capabilities.
- Rage Pro - While poor 3D drivers made it lacklustre in gaming when it was launched in 1997, its low cost, 2D image quality and DVD performance made it a bestseller to OEMs, and its successors, the Rage 128 and Rage XL video chips, are still available in some machines. This was the first ATI chip to include a triangle setup engine, making it possible to support OpenGL in hardware.
- Rage Fury MAXX - Launched 1999, this was ATI's first and last foray into dual-chip videocards. Despite possessing twin Rage 128 Pro processors, it was plagued with driver issues and lukewarm performance.
- All-In-Wonder Series - Launched in 1994 and unique to ATI, this multimedia video model line offers TV tuning, MPEG/DVD acceleration, and 3D gaming on a single card. Several models also include features such as HDTV encoding and digital TV tuning.
- Mobility Radeon Series - A series of miniaturized versions of Radeon graphics chips for use in laptops. ATI has traditionally been the major player in this field, while introducing innovations such as modularized RAM chips, DVD acceleration, and "POWERPLAY" power management technology. The Mobility Radeon 9000 which debuted in September 2002 was the first notebook video GPU designed for high performance gaming with anti-aliasing. More recently the M10 (mobility 9600) and M11 (mobility 9700) chips have brought near desktop performance to the laptop sector. The higher power consumption of nVidia's FX chips, has enabled ATI to build a strong market position in the mobile sector.
- Radeon Series - Launched in 2000, this is the mainstream ATI 3D gaming consumer card. ATI often produces 'Pro' versions with higher clock speeds, and sometimes an extreme 'XT' version. While this can be purely for marketing reasons, having higher and lowered clocked parts to the same spec, enables effective bin splitting of the chips during manufacturing to maximize profit.
- The Radeon cards supporting DirectX 7: ATI Radeon 7000, 7200, 7500
- DirectX 8.1 Radeons: 8500, 9000, 9200, 9250
- DirectX 9 Radeons, or the "R300" series: 9500, 9550, 9600, 9700, 9800, designed to compete with the GeForce FX made by nVidia.
- Radeon 9700 - Released in 2002, it is widely regarded one of the most innovative product launches in videocard history. Notable wins included highly efficient and visually appealing anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering algorithms, full DirectX 9 compliance, as well as performance figures sometimes double of its competitors. The 9700 can be seen as ATI's turning point within the 3D gaming market from underdog to serious competitor.
- The Radeon X Series, a 2004 addition to the Radeon line - X300, X600, X700, X800, X850 - designed to compete with nVidia's GeForce 6 Series. Architecturally, these cards are still direct descendants of the original 9700 core, with various improvements and additions such as power optimization, and an increased number of pixel pipes.
- FireGL - Launched in 2001, following ATI's acquisition of FireGL Graphics. Workstation CAD/CAM video card, based on the Radeon series.
- Imageon - Introduced in 2002 to bring integrated 3D graphics to handhelds, cellphones, and Tablet PCs.
- RADEON XPRESS 200/200P - ATI's first motherboard chipset (available for the Athlon 64 only). The chipset supports SATA and PCI Express. The 200 edition includes integrated graphics with DirectX 9.0 support, the first ever integrated graphics chipset to do so.
Upcoming graphics cards (core names) include: R480, R500 (X-Box 2), R520.
Stocks
Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) symbol: ATY
NASDAQ Stock Exchange (NASDAQ) symbol: ATYT (http://quotes.nasdaq.com/asp/SummaryQuote.asp?symbol=ATYT&selected=ATYT)
External links
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