ati Interview with Dave Orton

Dave Orton

Allan: Hi Dave congratulations on the position of CEO at ATI and thanks for taking the time to talk to the readership of Driverheaven.net, for all our readers who perhaps aren't aware can you tell us how you came to work for ATI and perhaps a brief history of your working career.

Dave: Thanks Allan. I came to ATI as a result of ATI’s acquisition of ArtX in April 2000, where I was President & CEO. Prior to joining ArtX I was at SGI where I spent almost 10 years with my most recent position being Senior Vice President of the Visual Computing Business. I also worked in the graphics and semiconductor industry as an engineer at GE and Bell Laboratories.

Allan: What is it like working for ATI? And what does a "normal" day in your working life entail?

Dave: I’m not sure you can call any day at ATI “normal”, it’s fast-paced and energetic -- it’s a great place to work, and I get to work with very talented people who are passionate about their jobs. My time is spent on almost all aspects of the business, with a specific focus on our product strategy and our operations.

Allan: Where would you like to see ATI in 5 years time - what are your goals?

Dave: In this industry, five years is a lifetime! In fact, if we follow Moore’s law, in five years we will have increased graphics performance by a factor of 10. On the PC side, first I’d like to see that the visual aspects of the PC market continue to grow and that ATI is at the forefront of driving that growth. Of course I want to see ATI continue to gain strength, momentum and marketshare. We are also focusing on growing the other parts of our business. Five years from now 3D gaming will be default on cell phones and DTV will be everywhere. We have made great strides in the handheld and DTV markets and we will continue to grow in those areas. From a corporate perspective, I would like to see ATI recognized as a truly innovative company and a leader in the semiconductor industry.

Allan: What do you see as the most important development in your industry over the next two years excluding PCI express?

Dave: The next major developments in the PC industry will be Longhorn and the next generation of DirectX. We will work closely with our partners – OEMs and SIs, game developers and, of course, Microsoft – to ensure that we are as on top of those transitions as we have been with DirectX 9 and PCI Express. Additionally, ATI views HDTV to have reached mass public acceptance. With digtal broadcast content available to more than 99% of U.S. TV households, ATI is just about to ship a new digital television (DTV) product, HDTV WONDER, that demonstrates ATI’s investment in television and video technologies. ATI is leveraging core DTV technologies and the power of the PC.

Allan: Will consumer cards still be the main focus of ATI or will the recent shifts into the mobile phone/integrated chipsets become just as or more important?

Dave: The handheld and integrated businesses are very important to us and we will continue to grow those areas. Part of growing those areas is to keep a strong focus on the performance crown in the desktop space. It’s there that you can innovate and develop new cutting-edge products. We can cut our teeth on new processes technologies and can develop features first on the high end and then drive that throughout our product line. Over time we are able to take the best practices and key learnings from the PC space and apply it to the handheld and integrated spaces. We can also draw on our experience in power management – something our mobile PC team has just about mastered – and use that in our handheld and integrated parts. That is where our diversity is a real strength.

Allan: I'm sure you are aware of a lot of the driver investigations regarding "optimisations" in benchmarks and certain games, what are your personal views on this subject?

Dave: Optimizations aren’t evil. Somewhere along the way the word optimization became synonymous with cheating. There is a key distinction between the two. An optimization is there to improve the overall gaming experience. We use optimizations to make general improvements to all applications. Application specific optimizations do not necessarily reflect the overall performance of a piece of hardware, or how the product will perform on a broad range of applications. Also, optimizations can be undone or reversed if the application being detected changes. This can result in an unexpected drop in performance. Application detection and application specific optimizations for benchmarks which do not improve the game as well as the benchmark and optimizations that decrease image quality to better performance are always wrong. Finally, it’s important to ensure that all optimizations result in code that is WHQL certifiable as this certification is the only industry standard for a minimum quality bar for the released software.

Allan: When I was recently chatting to you in Canada we discussed driver development and progress, with the fact ATI are a leader in Direct3d performance/stability but are sadly lacking in the OpenGL sector especially when compared to your main competitor, can you detail how ATI under your leadership plan to improve this?

Dave: We are always looking for ways to improve our products. And a key part of that is our software. Many of the improvements that we have made in the software area are already evident. For example, we have improved our testing processes, resulting in more frequent and more stable drivers and we have implemented a feedback program to learn of driver bugs early on so we can rectify them. Some of the improvements aren’t evident yet, but will be soon. It’s readily apparent that the work we’ve done on the DX driver is world class. We are confident we will do whatever is necessary to make our OGL driver the new industry standard for stability and performance.

Allan: What about Linux driver development? This market is expanding each year, are there any plans to increase driver updates or support for this market? How important to you feel the Linux market is to ATI?

Dave: Linux is about 3-6% of the current desktops in the world. As such, a while back, we introduced Linux support under the CATALYST umbrella. That means a steady and consistent release cycle. In fact, once we get going with the Linux postings (very shortly), we will be updating our Linux driver every two months. This shows that we are very committed and serious about supporting the Linux community.

Allan: Catalyst has been an incredible success for ATI and it's widely recognised that ATI appear to value their dedicated enthusiast following by pioneering many radical schemes such as the ATI beta testing user group headed up by Terry Makedon, how would you like to see Catalyst developing over the coming years?

Dave: CATALYST is a software suite that is the ultimate in performance, stability, and innovation. It will constantly evolve to what the market demands. Our first priority was stability and that is what our main focus has been since we launched CATALYST. However, deep within ATI’s driver research departments, we have been working on a project that will bring a whole new level of usability for VPU software. This product will be launched before the end of this year, and we are very excited about it -- it will be a major step forward in terms of exposing more control and usability, something that users are asking us for. As long as people keep using CATALYST CREW (ATI’s feedback mechanism) we will continue to let our users tell US what the future of CATALYST holds.

Allan: The ATI motherboard chipsets for Intel have received some very good reviews, will ATI be developing AMD64 motherboards in the future?

Dave: Yes. The chipset business is a key growth market for ATI moving forward and we are committed to delivering high-performance PCI Express chipsets for both Intel and AMD platforms. These chipsets should be publicly available this fall.

Allan: In more than one review there have been comments made on the lack of Dual-DVI on ATI graphics cards. Additionally there has been more than one web-chat where the lack of dual-DVI has also been mentioned. When ATI strive to have the best image quality why is it that ATI's main desktop cards are still single DVI? And in future do you see there being a switch towards Dual-DVI for at least the high end cards?

Dave: We are always looking at the market and determining the best way to serve the market with our products. In the workstation space we moved to dual-DVI quite a while ago. We evaluated the use of our products and found that many customers would benefit from the two DVI connectors. When we looked at dual-DVI use in the consumer space we didn’t find the same penetration as in the professional arena, so we decided not to include dual-DVI in our retail products. However, the capability is in the chip – and has been for some time now – and our partners are free to expose the dual-DVI capabilities. In fact, several of our partners have brought dual-DVI products to market and we think it is a great way for them to differentiate their products from other board partners.

Allan: There has been lots of focus on the X-box 2 announcement however not a lot on the Nintendo deal. Are ATI still actively working with Nintendo on their upcoming technology or has X-box 2 changed the relationship with Nintendo?

Dave: Our relationship with Nintendo remains strong and stands as outlined in our press release in March of last year. We have a technology development agreement with Nintendo. We would not jeopardize our partnership with Nintendo by discussing future products, I will leave that to Nintendo.

Allan: Do you think that ATI working on both consoles will benefit the industry as a whole, and if so - how?

Dave: Our hardware is known for being easy to program. We have a great deal of experience working with game developers and helping them make great games for our customers. We plan to leverage that experience across our business – in consoles as you mentioned – as well as in the PC and handheld markets to ensure that ATI hardware – whatever the platform – delivers the best gaming experience possible.

Allan: One of the features which is lacking in the original x-box console is a VGA or DVI out. Would this be a feature that ATI would consider incorporating in the design for X-box 2's graphics solution?

Dave: Unfortunately you’ll have to ask Microsoft about their upcoming products.

Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions Dave, anything else you would like to say?

Dave: Thanks for this opportunity. We are always looking for ways to improve our products, so if you have ideas or suggestions for us, send them along.