At the end of this month, ATI Technologies plans to unveil its RX480 north bridge, which will be the company’s first discrete chipset to support Advanced Micro Devices’ (AMD) K8 platform, said Reuven Soraya, director of platform product marketing at ATI, during a recent visit to Taipei.
The RX480, which will also be the first K8 chipset to feature PCIe connectivity, will be built using a 0.13-micron process at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), according to Soraya.
With a number of PC OEMs and motherboard makers starting to roll out products featuring the RX480, ATI aims to be become the largest supplier of PCIe-enabled K8 chipsets within one year, Soraya stated.
Soraya pointed out that K8 motherboards are targeting the channel/clone market, where demand for discrete system chipsets is extremely strong and this prompted ATI to venture into the production of K8 chipsets.
In addition to the RX480, ATI will launch its RS480 integrated chipset for the K8 platform and the RS400 integrated chipset for Intel’s Pentium 4 platform, at the end of September, Soraya noted.
ATI is also confident it will become the second largest vendor of PCIe-enabled integrated P4 chipsets within one year, stated the ATI executive.
Market rival Nvidia also plans on launching its PCIe-supporting K8 chipset, the nForce4-series lineup, in the fourth quarter of this year.
Article translated by Steve Shen and edited by Michael McManus
