Introduction
Today, ATI annouced its first
ever motherboard chipset in Cebit at Hannover,
Germany. With great public and media interest
they have launched seven different products encompassing
four northbridges and two southbridges. ATI's
intention is to grab more market share of the
rapidly growing integrated chipset market that
is estimated to power half the PCs on the market.
They plan on doing this by providing reliability,
quality and performance that is expected by a
product with this brand name. All at a cost-effective
pricepoint that will be attractive in all key
market areas.
Why the jump to the chipset market?
The question should actually be asked why not?
The chipset market especially the integrated chipset
market has a substantial amount of growth predicted
that everyone wants to cash in on. Nvidia went
into it with a "high performance" integrated
chipset that targetted the high end of the market.
I thought it was a great product but it has not
as yet made a big impact in the market. ATI already
has all the video products it can put into the
chipset but no chipset and thats what a team in
Santa Clara has been doing for the past eighteen
months with the additional bonus that they probably
already have engineers from the ArtX division
who designed the S1-370 TL. I don't believe that
product ever came out when ATI acquired it.
I was fortunate enough to be
briefed on ATI's new products a week ago and briefly
saw a few of them in action during my lunch break
and unfortunately I have very little to say about
the performance related issues because I had to
quickly go back to work!