The launch will turn up the heat on Intel, which controls more than half of the market for integrated graphics ICs, and also on ATI archrival Nvidia Corp., whose nForce integrated north bridge/graphics processor supports Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s Athlon 4 microprocessor.

In an interview last week, ATI acknowledged its plans to launch an embedded graphics processor before the end of the year, but would not confirm whether the device would be designed to support the P4 architecture.

"We believe there are only a couple of graphics IC companies that offer top-of-the-line integrated graphics technologies, ... and we believe we will become a key player in that space," said Rick Bergman, ATI's senior vice president of marketing and general manager of the Markham, Ontario, company's desktop business. "We have also learned a lot from our first integrated graphics offering and already know what our customers want and need."

ATI has been licensed by Intel to supply chipsets for the P4, and the integrated north bridge/graphics processor will be its first core-logic device, according to sources with knowledge of the company's product plans. By contrast, Nvidia has no chipset license from Intel.

A spokesman for Nvidia said last week that the company is continuing to negotiate with Intel for a license, but would be unable to introduce a chipset to support the P4 any time soon, even if it is able to strike a deal. Michael Hara, vice president of investor relations at Nvidia, Santa Clara, Calif., told EBN recently that the company's available production capacity will be dedicated for some time to processors that support AMD's Athlon and an MPU at the heart of Microsoft Corp.'s X-Box game console slated for introduction this fall.

The embedded advantage

ATI and Nvidia are both angling to offer high-performance, low-cost graphics solutions that eliminate bus lines and extra components by integrating the PC's north bridge memory controller with the companies' respective graphics processing technology. A separate south bridge I/O controller is still required, according to either design approach. In the case of Nvidia's nForce embedded chipset, which features dual-memory channels, data rates of 4.2Gbytes/s are possible, the highest bandwidth offered by any PC graphics platform, according to AMD.

Industry sources said ATI's integrated graphics processor initially will use the company's 64-bit bus line to connect with system memory, while Nvidia's nForce uses a 128-bit bus. Both are expected to support double-data-rate (DDR) SDRAM.

A source familiar with ATI's graphics development project said the device has been designed to support higher-speed PC333 DDR (PC2400 modules), which are just coming onto the market. Nvidia's nForce initially supports PC266 (PC2100 modules), which have a slightly lower data rate.

Selecting markets

Combined, ATI and Nvidia have more than an 80% share of the discrete graphics IC market and have made significant headway in advancing application programming interface-based visual effects and boosting graphics processing speeds. Intel, meanwhile, owns the majority share of the integrated graphics market, where performance has typically been sacrificed in favor of reduced memory requirements and smaller circuit boards.

With the boundaries laid out, ATI and Nvidia are expected to target their embedded processors at applications in midrange PCs. As with Nvidia's embedded processor, the ATI chipset should carve out a new performance niche in desktops, said Jon Peddie, an analyst at Jon Peddie Associates, Mill Valley, Calif.

"While [ATI] won't be able to pull it off until the first quarter of next year, the device will offer an exceptionally high-performance unified memory architecture," he said. "It will take advantage of [Intel's] front-side bus and internal caches. Like what Intel and Nvidia offer, [the processor] will reduce the amount of memory required and save board space."

Peddie noted that it will be difficult to gauge what impact ATI's and Nvidia's offerings will have on the integrated graphics market, given that it has so far been dominated by Intel. "Intel has a lot of pull politically, so it's hard to read the tea leaves," he said.

ATI's embedded processor will represent the fourth third-party chipset supporting the P4. Two other companies licensed to use Intel's processor bus, Silicon Integrated Systems Inc. and Acer Laboratories Inc., also are expected to begin shipping by year's end. Via Technologies Inc. has unveiled an unlicensed P4 chipset. (See story on page 3.) Intel will introduce a PC133 SDRAM-equipped chipset for the P4, the 845, next month; a DDR version will follow in the first quarter of 2002.