ATI WILL DISTRIBUTE its next generation GPUs, namely R360 for the high-end market and RV360 for the mainstream market to its partners beginning in July, it has emerged.
Both R360 and RV360 will be manufactured by TSMC, using 0.15µ and 0.13µ processes, respectively. There will be a significant volume increase in ATI's Q3 orders at TSMC compared to the second quarter.
ATI will continue to draw on TSMC as its primary partner, although it has given part of its graphic chip orders to UMC this year, maintaining its dual-fab partnership strategy. According to sources, ATI is inclined to have UMC manufacturing its 0.15µ GPUs in the future, while concentrating its 0.13µ GPU orders at TSMC.
Faced with Nvidia's NV35 high-end GPU announced earlier this week, ATI plans to head into battle with Radeon 9800 first. It will deliver the more powerful R360 later to combat NV35. R360 will be manufactured by TSMC using 0.15µ process, while RV360, the successor of RV350 for the mainstream market, will use 0.13µ process.
TSMC has declined to comment on ATI's orders, the Chinese press reports here, but according to an ATI executive, the production of RV350 has been going quite smoothly, and its yield has met the company's expectation.
The volume of RV280 is continuing to increase at UMC, and ATI is considering to have another new product manufactured by UMC. This will be the second ATI GPU utilizing UMC's 0.15u process, though UMC has also declined to comment on customers' orders.
Besides the graphic chips, ATI will enter the integrated chipset market during the second half of this year, competing for the market share with VIA, Intel, SiS, and ALi in the P4 chipset market. ATI's chipsets will also be manufactured by TSMC and UMC.
ATI is the first company worldwide to obtain Pentium 4 chipset licenses from Intel. Targeting the integrated market, ATI's chipsets will enter mass production in July. ATI has had excellent performance in the notebook chipset market. As it steps into the desktop field, ATI will attempt to avoid over-lengthening its product line by not producing discrete chipsets.
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News source:
TheInquirer
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