R
Radeon350
http://cube.ign.com/mail.html
Nintendo and ATI: A History
With the recent news that ATi will be working with Microsoft on the
Xbox 2, where does this leave ATi and Nintendo? A while back in this
mailbag you mentioned that they had been working on a chip for the
next system for a while now, but I've heard recently that they might
have severed connections between the companies. Can you shed any light
on the situation?
Matt responds: There's actually a long history here. Let me see if I
can explain it. Basically, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,
Nintendo selected a company called SGI to design the graphics
architecture for its Nintendo 64 system. Dr. Wei Yen led the team that
worked on the chipset. More than five years later, Dr. Wei Yen left
SGI to form the Palo Alto, California-based ArtX, and he took a great
deal of the original SGI Nintendo team with him. Soon afterward, SGI
sued, but the suit went nowhere. Later, in a surprise move (at the
time), Nintendo selected ArtX to develop the GameCube graphics
processor, codenamed "Flipper." Well, into the development of this
chip, graphics card maker powerhouse ATI acquired ArtX. I believe that
Yen still sits on ATI's board.
Since, the ArtX group at ATI has allegedly been in development with
the graphics chipset for the successor to GameCube. A cryptic
announcement was made in March in this regard. It is supposedly
progressing steadily. As I understand it, Nintendo is too far in with
the ATI chipset to sever ties at this point, even if it wanted to.
ATI is all-too capable of creating separate products for Nintendo and
Microsoft at the same time because it has multiple operations and
multiple teams. In the end, the chipsets may be very similar, but this
would probably more of a coincidence than anything else.
Nintendo and ATI: A History
With the recent news that ATi will be working with Microsoft on the
Xbox 2, where does this leave ATi and Nintendo? A while back in this
mailbag you mentioned that they had been working on a chip for the
next system for a while now, but I've heard recently that they might
have severed connections between the companies. Can you shed any light
on the situation?
Matt responds: There's actually a long history here. Let me see if I
can explain it. Basically, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,
Nintendo selected a company called SGI to design the graphics
architecture for its Nintendo 64 system. Dr. Wei Yen led the team that
worked on the chipset. More than five years later, Dr. Wei Yen left
SGI to form the Palo Alto, California-based ArtX, and he took a great
deal of the original SGI Nintendo team with him. Soon afterward, SGI
sued, but the suit went nowhere. Later, in a surprise move (at the
time), Nintendo selected ArtX to develop the GameCube graphics
processor, codenamed "Flipper." Well, into the development of this
chip, graphics card maker powerhouse ATI acquired ArtX. I believe that
Yen still sits on ATI's board.
Since, the ArtX group at ATI has allegedly been in development with
the graphics chipset for the successor to GameCube. A cryptic
announcement was made in March in this regard. It is supposedly
progressing steadily. As I understand it, Nintendo is too far in with
the ATI chipset to sever ties at this point, even if it wanted to.
ATI is all-too capable of creating separate products for Nintendo and
Microsoft at the same time because it has multiple operations and
multiple teams. In the end, the chipsets may be very similar, but this
would probably more of a coincidence than anything else.