BREAKTHROUGHS: "I don’t want to pre-hype this, but in 2005 we will be talking more about linux."

What are the most important technical breakthroughs in the graphic chip business since the Voodoo 2?

Voodoo 2 seems so long ago now. I still remember queuing up at our local electronic store to buy a board when it first came out - even though I was working for a competitor.

There have been several technology transitions since Voodoo 2 in graphics chip business. Some of the significant ones that I can think about are:
- Semiconductor process transistioned from 0.35 Micron to 0.13 Micron.
- Memory technology transitions from 64-bit SDR to 256-bit DDR3.
- On board memory went up from 8 MB to 256 Mb.
- Memory clocks are up from 50 MHz range to 550+ MHz range today.
- Graphics engine clocks are up from 50 MHz range to 500+ MHz range today.
- API (Application Program Interface) transitioned from Direct X 5 to Direct X 9.

From graphics feature set point of view – I think the R300 technology with the floating point pixel shading capabilities was a big inflection point. This was the first generation of graphics hardware which allowed for mapping any mathematical representation of lighting equations onto the GPU (Graphic Processing Unit). R300 was really the beginning of the new era in real-time graphics. From Voodoo 2 to pre-R300 Direct X 8 hardware, we witnessed a steady increase of capabilities – with each generation allowing the developer to code up an additional new lighting effect or two. While the concept of shaders were introduced in Direct X 8, they were of limited length and more importantly they were not floating point –limiting their use to a very restrictive mapping of lighting and material computation techniques. R300 opened up the shader flood gates to practically limitless opportunities.

All the linux experts I talked with prefer boards with Nvidia graphic chips. Their main argument is that the Nvidia driver is more mature and stable than the ATI driver. Are there plans to improve ATI driver quality, for example by enlarging the linux driver development team?

Yes. We have a major effort on-going internally at ATI to address these concerns. I don’t want to pre-hype this. We are very determined to change this perception of our users. In 2005 we will be talking more about linux.