ATI loses ground in graphics after AMD purchase
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(InfoWorld) - ATI Technologies lost ground in every major graphics product category during the third quarter, and itsÂ acquisition by Advanced Micro DevicesÂ is likely to blame, according to Jon Peddie Research. The purchase put ATI directly in competition with one of its major partners, Intel, analysts say, which is the main reason ATI's market share dropped. For the past few years, ATI has supplied the market with integrated graphics chip sets compatible with Intel microprocessors, but the purchase by AMD has slowed that gravy train. Although ATI can still make the chip sets, component makers in Taiwan say it hasn't been selling as many as before. Jon Peddie Research figures bear out the difference. ATI's PC graphics market share slumped by 5 percentage points in the third quarter to 23 percent, from a 28 percent share in the second quarter of this year. Although ATI retained its hold on second place worldwide, it's a steep drop. ATI rivals Nvidia, Via Technologies, and Silicon Integrated SystemsÂ (SiS) all gained share during the three month period, while graphics leader Intel maintained its market share. The most dramatic market share decrease for ATI was in the mobile segment. ATI's share of the segment fell to 47 percent in the third quarter, from 63 percent in the second quarter. Nvidia picked up the slack, taking a 53 percent share in the market, up from 37 percent, according to Jon Peddie Research. The researcher also charted lost share for ATI in notebook PC and desktop PC graphics processors and integrated chipsets. The problem wasn't with the graphics chip market overall, either. Major vendors shipped approximately 76 million graphics devices during the quarter, up 5.2 percent over the second quarter and a gain of 11.2 percent compared to the same time last year. The trouble lies solely with ATI, the market researcher noted. AMD completed its $5.4 billion purchase of ATI in October. The company plans to use ATI to add graphics technology to microprocessors by 2009,Â in a project it calls "Fusion."Â The integration will increase power efficiency, AMD says. Chip makers have already integrated graphics into chip sets, and PC makers can also buy stand alone graphics processors to place on motherboards or graphics cards. Â
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Way back in June I suggested you hold off on buying a new PC until systems with PCI Express shipped. The new technology has the potential to dramatically improve performance because it replaces the pokey old
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RS600 debuts as Radeon Xpress 1250 ATI last night rolled out its latest chipset for Intel processors, pitching the part at both desktop and notebook systems. The launch marks the arrival of the chip maker's RS600 North Bridge and features not only its Avivo video processing pipeline but full HDMI and HDCP support.â¦
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Graphics-chip suppler ATI Technologies Inc. recently announced it would introduce 90-nm graphics chips in mid-2005 and contract foundry giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
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ATI Technologies Inc. has announced that PCI Express (PCIe)-enabled graphics cards are set to account for 25% of the global graphics card market by year-end.
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Amid further delays of AMD&#39;s quad-core server chip and plans to write off goodwill from the acquisition of ATI, AMD executives are going to face tough questions when they meet financial analysts in New York Thursday.AMD preempted the analyst meeting with the announcement Wednesday that it plans to take a material charge for impaired goodwill from its US$5.4 billion acquisition of graphics chip maker ATI. But AMD didn&#39;t say how big that charge will be, promising to announce the amount within four days -- a span of time that implies details of the charge will be revealed after the analyst meeting.Goodwill is a financial term that describes the difference between the price that one company paid to acquire another and the net value of the assets that it acquires. This difference, or goodwill, reflects the intangibles that a company acquires, such as the reputation and intellectual property of the acquired company.AMD initially recorded goodwill of $3.22 billion from the acquisition of ATI. That was reduced to $3.17 billion at the end of September, primarily due to changes in income-tax liabilities recorded by the company. AMD&#39;s decision to write off a significant portion of this goodwill is a recognition that ATI is no longer worth the price it paid last year.The expected charge further dims AMD&#39;s gloomy financial outlook. The company has so far lost $1.6 billion this year on sales of $4.2 billion. By comparison, AMD recorded a $410 million profit on sales of $3.9 billion during the first nine months of 2006. At the same time, AMD borrowed heavily this year to keep its operations moving, issuing $3.7 billion in notes that are convertible into company shares.AMD received a further boost last month with a $608 million investment from a company owned by the Abu Dhabi government, but the company still faces significant challenges.Those challenges are reflected in the decline of AMD&#39;s gross margin since last year, partly as a result of the ATI acquisition, which brought lower-margin products into AMD&#39;s lineup, but also because server chips represented a lower percentage of the company&#39;s microprocessor sales. Server chips are generally more expensive and have higher margins than processors used in desktops and notebooks, and strong sales of server chips would give a badly needed boost to AMD&#39;s financial situation.The problem is that AMD&#39;s latest server chip, the Quad-Core Opteron formerly known as&#160;Barecelona has been repeatedly delayed,&#160;giving rival Intel an opening to expand sales of its own server chips at AMD&#39;s expense.After recently discovering&#160;a bug in the Quad-Core Opteron that stopped shipments of the chip, AMD now expects the processor, launched in September, to finally ship in large volumes sometime during the first quarter of 2008. That means the Quad-Core Opteron might not be available to most customers until March, six months after its launch and more than one year after the first pre-production samples of the chip were made available to server makers.While analysts will be looking for more detailed guidance on when AMD expects to ship Quad-Core Opteron chips in volume, they will also be looking for information on the next version of the Quad-Core Opteron, called Shanghai. AMD promised to ship Shanghai during the middle of 2008, but the company has yet to produce working samples of the chip.&quot;We will have initial samples also in January. I&#39;m fairly confident that those puppies are going to boot, and then we can have a follow-up conference call and I&#39;ll tell you, &#39;The sucker is booting,&#39;&quot; said Mario Rivas, the executive vice president of AMD&#39;s Computing Products Group, responding to a question about Shanghai during a recent interview with CRN.Whether that means AMD will release Shanghai in mid-2008 as promised remains to be seen.Shanghai is a 45-nanometer &quot;shrink&quot; of the problematic Barcelona chip, which is produced using a 65-nanometer process. These numbers represent the average size of the smallest feature that can be created on a chip, and smaller is generally considered better.Moving to a more advanced production process offers chip makers several benefits, such as reducing unit production costs by making the chip smaller or adding more features, such as additional on-chip cache. But the move to a more advanced process also carries risks, such as the possibility of lower production yields that can result in limited availability or chips that run at lower clock speeds than expected.Along with these issues looming over AMD, there are questions about the future of Hector Ruiz, the company&#39;s CEO and chairman. As head of the company, Ruiz ultimately bears responsibility for the company&#39;s recent performance problems and the impending write down of goodwill from the ATI acquisition. For months, there has been speculation within the industry that Ruiz would be forced to step down from his current position.However, that&#39;s unlikely to happen, according to a Reuters report citing comments made by Ruiz in a television interview to be aired by CNBC Europe later today. During that interview, Ruiz named AMD President and COO Dirk Meyer as his successor, but scotched speculation he plans to step down next year, the report said.
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ATI Technologies Inc. announced an integrated chipset family for the AMD Athlon 64 and Sempron procesor families on Monday, helping AMD push its 64-bit technology down into the value space.
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GPGPU for U and me Even before its merger with AMD closes, ATI plans to charge the server market with a new type of graphics product that could shake up the high performance computing scene. Advocates of ATI's technology say it could create a lucrative new revenue stream for the company and add some weight to the ATI/AMD marriage.â¦
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TechWeb - Gamers are up in arms after drivers for the graphics processors prove incompatible with Microsoft's latest Windows operating system.
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Advanced Micro Devices Inc  , the world's second-largest maker of computer  microprocessors, on Thursday posted a wider quarterly net loss  due to a $1.68 billion charge related to its purchase of  graphics chipmaker ATI.
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Enterprise apps to run on games hardware, company hopes ATI - effectively AMD - has begun pitching its Radeon X1900 graphics chip at corporates, not for running graphics on workstations but for processing large data sets much the way Intel's Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) are meant to.â¦
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ATI HAS developed a new technology to allow system memory to be fully utilised by graphics boards, it said today. The extra bandwidth of the PCI Express bus means that shuttling data to and fro between the
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(InfoWorld) - Advanced Micro Devices on Wednesday announced the availability of its 690 chip set, the company's first integrated chip set for AMD processors the includes the ATI Radeon X1250 graphics processor. Integrating the Radeon X1250 graphics processor into the 690 chip set means PCs based on the chip set will not require an add-in graphics card. AMD acquired ATI Technologies last year and has worked quickly to harness the company's graphics expertise with its own processor lineup, including chip sets -- the PC component that connects a processor with other components, including memory and peripherals. The 690 chip set is compatible with AMD's desktop processor lineup and offers several high-end features, including integrated DVI (digital visual interface) and HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) outputs for high-definition video. The chip set also includes hardware decoding for MPEG2, the video compression technology used with DVDs -- which means less CPU power is required when playing DVDs on a computer. The new chip set is available on motherboards from more than 10 companies, including Asustek Computer and Elitegroup Computer Systems Co., AMD said.
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Granted, from a performance point of view PCI-Express is barely a match for AGP8X, but both ATI and NVIDIA have been aggressively moving forward with introducing graphic cards using the interface.
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ATI Technologies announced a technology that reduces the need for dedicated graphics memory, which could lead to lower PC system costs.
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Groovy graphics card, and a snip at Â£45 Review Since it bought ATi last year, AMD has been busy rebranding any number of chipsets and graphics chips in its range. Some of the instances make perfect sense while others are a cynical rebranding of an old chip.â¦
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Still carrying the weight of costs related to last year&#39;s&#160;acquisition of graphics vendor ATI, AMD recorded its fourth straight quarter of net losses Thursday.