alinghi
17-12-2003, 12:56
About the Speaker:
Rick Bergman is Senior Vice President of Marketing & General Manager, Desktop Business, ATI Technologies Inc. He is also a member of the Company’s Executive Management Team.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rick Bergman
Hi, this is Rick Bergman. Thank you for joining our chat this evening. I look forward to informal answers to your questions. Thanks for your interest in ATI.
Nicole
Are there any major trends in graphics in the next several years?
Rick Bergman
There are three significant inflection points in the graphics industry over the next couple of years. 1) PCI-Express: this represents the first major bus transition for graphics in almost ten years and should occur in mid-2004. Back in September, ATI was the first graphics vendor to demonstrate PCI-Express in a system from Intel. We continue to maintain this leadership in this important standard.
2) Longhorn: this is the next generation Operating System from Microsoft to follow XP. This will be the first OS that extensively utilizes 3D graphics, and will really push the envelop on graphics. This will increase the value of graphics in the PC and provides a great opportunity for ATI.
3) DX10: this is the next Application Programming Interface for 3D graphics. As everyone knows, ATI lead the industry with DX9 -- the RADEON 9700 Pro. We are working closely with Microsoft on DX10 to make sure that we are in the forefront of this technology.
Zitadelle
Hi…I’d like to know about the new Mobility RADEON card that’s coming out, and when it will be available?
Rick Bergman
The most recent Mobility product from ATI is the RADEON 9600. We introduced the product about three months ago and now can be purchased in many notebooks from major OEMs worldwide. We will be introducing some new solutions in early 2004.
Danica
What do you think about 3dMark2003?
Rick Bergman
3dMark2003 is an interesting tool for measuring graphics performance as long as it is used appropriately. Futuremark, the authors of 3dmark, recently published guidelines for the benchmark that help assure that end users can compare performance on a level playing field. The benchmark is a good tool when the graphics vendors follow these guidelines. Of course, no benchmark should be used in isolation. We also recommend that users also review scores on a wide range of games as well.
Caprino
I was wondering, if I buy the RADEON 9600SE will it be able to run games such as Half Life 2 and Doom 3, or would the 9600XT be a better investment
Rick Bergman
The RADEON 9600SE will run HL2 or Doom3 fine. You should use a card that has a minimum of DX8 level of graphics, and the 9600SE is currently the best mainstream DX9 card. Of course, the 9600XT is real burner with a 500MHz core and I would personally go for this solution if you are looking for the ultimate experience on these new games.
jd2502001
I would like to know which is the best ATI graphics card that i can purchase for less then $200 dollars?
Rick Bergman
The best ATI card (or any card for that matter) is the 9600XT with 128MB of memory. It is built in leading semiconductor process and the 500MHz core will be important as DX9 games evolve. It also comes bundled with HL2 which is a nice bonus.
atydiehard
Hi Rick, could you tell a disheartened atyt shareholder anything that might put a smile on his face after a rough few sessions? Seems very bright for atyt from what I have heard but Wall Street isn’t hearing the same story or at least so it seems.
Rick Bergman
Thanks for your support as a shareholder. As you know, we revised our guidance a couple of weeks ago. We are in our quiet period so I can't really offer any specifics around our financial performance. I can tell that the ATI employees are dedicated to continuing to offer the best products in the industry -- this will ultimately benefit our shareholders.
Hua
That's cool. I'm seeing a lot of video cards, some from ATI. Utilizing 256mb memory technology. Is this mainly for graphic intense application purposes, or for hardcore gamers?
Rick Bergman
256MB's are certainly going to be a major part of our line-up in the coming months. You will see this feature migrate down into our mainstream cards. While expensive at the beginning of 2003, memory prices continue to trend downwards. There are definite benefits to having the additional memory for the new games at higher resolutions. So if your budget allows, I'd start thinking about 256MB.
philly b
Hi Rick. Could you briefly discuss the positioning of ATI in the desktop marketplace (recent developments, market share)? Thanks!
Rick Bergman
Thanks --- three years ago, we committed ourselves to providing the industry's best performance. With the introduction of the 9700 Pro, there is no question that ATI has achieved this goal and continue to offer the best performance with 9800 Pro and now 9800 XT. As this technology cascades into additional markets, we are gaining market share. The 9600 is a great example where we now have tremendous demand. Our market share increased by 4% last quarter.
BillGateway
Why do you recommend me buy an ATI RADEON AGP Graphic Card than from any other AGP graphic card company?
Rick Bergman
ATI offers many advantages to the graphics buyer. For one, our visual quality is unsurpassed in the industry. This applies not only the gaming, but also the video area. Second, ATI has the best driver (Catalyst) with the highest stability, leading performance, great feature set and tremendous feedback mechanism for our fans. Third, we also offer the best customer support. There is a reason that ATI has been the leading graphics supplier for three decades.
foreigner
Will the HDTV or Digital TV revolution impact your company top line growth?
Rick Bergman
HDTV is playing a major role in our future plans. We have recently announced significant designs with Sony and Samsung in the DTV area -- a couple of good, consumer brands. As HDTV continues its steep growth, ATI will be a major player in this area. Of course, our graphics cards already support HDTV today and is one of the many reasons why people love our AIW cards.
El_Coyote
Are we going to see improvements in the Dual monitor solutions in 2004? Specifically I’d like to see dual DVI outputs and another overhaul of hydravision.
Rick Bergman
At this point, our consumer cards do not support dual DVI due to limited demand. While flat panel displays are certainly a major factor, many of the monitors continue to have analog inputs. Our FGL cards offer this support, as well as several of our OEM partners. We continue to improve our Hydravision support.
Nuuk1
I would like to know if ATI is working on producing PCI Express graphic cards to private consumers?
Rick Bergman
ATI demonstrated the first PCI Express graphics card in September with our partner, Intel. We expect to see a big ramp of PCI Express platforms in 2Q 2004. We absolutely will offer consumers the option to buy PCI Express cards in this same time period.
vschandra
Hi Rick, I applied for the physical design engineer position in ATI long back and my skills perfectly matches with the job description. But I haven't heard anything from them till now. Do you have any suggestions for me what to do?
Rick Bergman
Thanks for your interest in ATI. With the nature of our products and our recent success, we get a tremendous number of applications for our open positions. I would continue to monitor our website for opportunities, and if you have any personal references into ATI, that always helps.
El_Coyote
It has been nice to see ATI hasn’t jumped on the aggressive marketing bandwagon the way certain competitors have. Are you keeping that strategy? And what new initiatives are we going to see in the time to come?
Rick Bergman
Our philosophy at ATI is to focus on our positive attributes and meeting customer requirements. As the leader in the market, we don't see any reason to depart from this strategy. Some key initiatives include PCI Express and our continue evolution of our Catalyst software suite.
Goliath
I wish to buy a 9600XT next week and i would like to know which one is better the ATI or the ASUS? (better for HL2)
Rick Bergman
You can't really lose buying a card from either ATI or Asus. Both companies have a long history of strong technology and good support. If you are buying a card, I would certainly make sure that it is "certified by ATI" which means it has a certain level of quality.
Nicole
When will we see Xbox2? What graphics will be used in this platform?
Rick Bergman
Back in August, ATI and Microsoft jointly announced an agreement on future Xbox technologies. We are very excited about this relationship but you'll need to wait for Microsoft to announce any more specifics.
El_Coyote
If you could redo a single thing since the introduction of the first RADEON, what would it be?
Rick Bergman
Great question --- I would have focused our team on offering an entry level DX9 card earlier in 2003. We have just introduced the 9600SE, but I sure would have liked to have this solution at the beginning of the year.
Goliath
How do you plan dealing with the situation of more and more heated GPUs in the future? Some of your cards (ASUS) already have 2 fans on them.
Rick Bergman
The power of graphics chips continue to rise -- which drives more heat. There are a few innovations that will help in the future. For example, ATI used "Low K" in our semiconductor process which helped reduce power. Another example is ATI working with memory vendors on the development of GDDR3 -- this reduces the overall board level power.
ATI #1 Fan
Who are some of your leading card manufacturers?
Rick Bergman
As most people now understand, ATI decided to offer our graphics technology to a broad range of graphics add-in board manufacturers (AIBs) in 2001. Since that time, the majority of the leading manufacturers have embraced our solutions. This includes Asus, Sapphire, CP, Creative Labs, Hercules, VisionTek, Gigabyte, Gigacube, Tyan, Elsa, Diamond, Hightech and several others.
Ming
What will ATI announce for your 1st quarter earnings?
Rick Bergman
Our quarter concluded on November 30th and we are currently in a quiet period. Please review our last press announcement on revised guidance on November 17, and stay tuned for our announcement on 12/19.
jd2502001
NVIDIA nForce2 was declared the Best Chipset of 2003. What are some downsides to it comparing to the leading ati graphics card?
Rick Bergman
In that same award, ATI was recognized as the best graphics card manufacture, best innovation in graphics and best innovation in mobile technology -- a complete sweep of discrete graphics awards. The graphics performance in that chipset uses DX6/DX7 level of graphics. Our ATI graphics cards now support a minimum of DX8, and most cards are now DX9. The chipset also has very limited memory bandwidth which can really constrain performance. In summary, if you are interested in the best visual quality, ATI cards offer the best solution.
eddieO
In addition to the question Nicole asked about Xbox2 and ATI. What happened with Gamecube? What is the current role of the company you guys purchased a couple of years ago that created the graphics chip for the current Gamecube?
Rick Bergman
ATI continues to enjoy a royalty stream from Gamecube console games, as well as the actual games. We also announce a technology agreement in March with Nintendo for future areas. The company we acquired, ArtX, is now fully integrated into ATI. The employees are working on a range of solutions at ATI from our integrated chipsets, discrete PC graphics and console products.
RADEON Lover
Why do ATI cards perform better on DX9 applications than your competition?
Rick Bergman
ATI worked closely with Microsoft on DX9 from the very beginning. We optimized our architecture to provide the best "shader" performance for DX9. We have some of the leading experts in the industry working for ATI.
trevor
Will ATI continue to offer All In Wonder products?
Rick Bergman
The AIW 9800 is our seventh generation product. This entire category is getting more exciting with high resolution displays, HDTV, digital video, etc. ATI will continue to offer leading products in this area for years to come. The AIW cards have swept virtually every award in the industry.
zitadelle
What kind of future dealings have opened up since your deal with Microsoft for the Xbox 2? Are you perhaps expanding in another direction to include say, sound cards or anything?
Rick Bergman
Anyone who is working on advanced graphics or video solutions invariably gives ATI a call. So there are many opportunities that we are exploring in a number of new spaces. But I would not expect to see ATI sound cards in the future.
bweier
With the successful migration to .13 micron silicon and now low k .13 silicon, what will be the next transition for ATI cores besides PCI Express?
Rick Bergman
The next process node in the semiconductor industry is 90nm (.09 micron). We are actively working with our fab partners on this technology and expect to have solutions in this technology in the latter part of 2004.
bweier
There is a marked difference between the PR philosophy of Nvidia and ATI. Would you like to comment on the perception that ATI lacks the aggressiveness and effectiveness of the Nvidia marketing/PR team?
Rick Bergman
I believe that ATI has a great marketing and PR team. As stated earlier, we will focus on the positive attributes of our products and features that are important to our customers. While you can gain momentary advantage with "aggressive" tactics, I am interested in building long term credibility in our brand and products. Ultimately, I believe that consumers see through "aggressive" tactics and go with the solid company --- I certainly see this scenario playing out this year. Our marketing research indicates that we have the preferred brand among consumers, and they are buying our solutions.
bweier
Is the Catalyst team still committed to monthly driver updates? I for one am concerned that that is too fast and wonder how they can keep up that pace and is there really enough changes to warrant this frequency of driver updates?
Rick Bergman
Our Catalyst team is absolutely committed to monthly updates -- we polled our customers, and they requested this frequency. We have a substantial investment in automating our testing, and we regression test our drivers nightly. So we are certainly capable of maintaining this pace.
Nikki Rox
When will ATI be releasing the next generation of products?
Rick Bergman
We generally don't discuss unreleased products but rest assured, the ATI team is cranking away on a broad range of products. We will be releasing an entire family of products in the first half of 2004. While I can't give any specifics, ATI has been the clear technology and performance leader for quite some time and our next generation won't disappoint our fans.
ant
Hello Rick, How do you see the graphics market evolving and ATI's role in the home appliance marketplace?
Rick Bergman
I talked about the importance of PCI Express, DX10 and Longhorn as key inflection points in the graphics market. ATI will play a significant role in the home appliance market. Think about the possibilities - we are the leaders in graphics, video technologies and mobile solutions. ATI is the best positioned company in the industry to take advantage of the digital home.
davea
We just came back from I/ITSEC where we had a booth demoing real-time lighting and shadows to our military customers. Lots of interest there which was great. I want to know about helping developers and collaboration with ATI
Rick Bergman
We have two groups at ATI that can help developers. We have our ISV group that supports the software developers (there is a link on our website). And we recently started an "Embedded Display Group" to support customers that are in applications outside of the PC space --- including military customers. You can also find additional information on our website about this group.
Rick Bergman
Thanks for all the great questions this evening and your continued support of ATI. Our team is dedicated to offering the best solutions for the graphics industry and we have enjoyed a great 2003. I look forward to 2004, and a new wave of exciting products and applications for ATI.
Thanks again and have a great holiday.
Rick Bergman is Senior Vice President of Marketing & General Manager, Desktop Business, ATI Technologies Inc. He is also a member of the Company’s Executive Management Team.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rick Bergman
Hi, this is Rick Bergman. Thank you for joining our chat this evening. I look forward to informal answers to your questions. Thanks for your interest in ATI.
Nicole
Are there any major trends in graphics in the next several years?
Rick Bergman
There are three significant inflection points in the graphics industry over the next couple of years. 1) PCI-Express: this represents the first major bus transition for graphics in almost ten years and should occur in mid-2004. Back in September, ATI was the first graphics vendor to demonstrate PCI-Express in a system from Intel. We continue to maintain this leadership in this important standard.
2) Longhorn: this is the next generation Operating System from Microsoft to follow XP. This will be the first OS that extensively utilizes 3D graphics, and will really push the envelop on graphics. This will increase the value of graphics in the PC and provides a great opportunity for ATI.
3) DX10: this is the next Application Programming Interface for 3D graphics. As everyone knows, ATI lead the industry with DX9 -- the RADEON 9700 Pro. We are working closely with Microsoft on DX10 to make sure that we are in the forefront of this technology.
Zitadelle
Hi…I’d like to know about the new Mobility RADEON card that’s coming out, and when it will be available?
Rick Bergman
The most recent Mobility product from ATI is the RADEON 9600. We introduced the product about three months ago and now can be purchased in many notebooks from major OEMs worldwide. We will be introducing some new solutions in early 2004.
Danica
What do you think about 3dMark2003?
Rick Bergman
3dMark2003 is an interesting tool for measuring graphics performance as long as it is used appropriately. Futuremark, the authors of 3dmark, recently published guidelines for the benchmark that help assure that end users can compare performance on a level playing field. The benchmark is a good tool when the graphics vendors follow these guidelines. Of course, no benchmark should be used in isolation. We also recommend that users also review scores on a wide range of games as well.
Caprino
I was wondering, if I buy the RADEON 9600SE will it be able to run games such as Half Life 2 and Doom 3, or would the 9600XT be a better investment
Rick Bergman
The RADEON 9600SE will run HL2 or Doom3 fine. You should use a card that has a minimum of DX8 level of graphics, and the 9600SE is currently the best mainstream DX9 card. Of course, the 9600XT is real burner with a 500MHz core and I would personally go for this solution if you are looking for the ultimate experience on these new games.
jd2502001
I would like to know which is the best ATI graphics card that i can purchase for less then $200 dollars?
Rick Bergman
The best ATI card (or any card for that matter) is the 9600XT with 128MB of memory. It is built in leading semiconductor process and the 500MHz core will be important as DX9 games evolve. It also comes bundled with HL2 which is a nice bonus.
atydiehard
Hi Rick, could you tell a disheartened atyt shareholder anything that might put a smile on his face after a rough few sessions? Seems very bright for atyt from what I have heard but Wall Street isn’t hearing the same story or at least so it seems.
Rick Bergman
Thanks for your support as a shareholder. As you know, we revised our guidance a couple of weeks ago. We are in our quiet period so I can't really offer any specifics around our financial performance. I can tell that the ATI employees are dedicated to continuing to offer the best products in the industry -- this will ultimately benefit our shareholders.
Hua
That's cool. I'm seeing a lot of video cards, some from ATI. Utilizing 256mb memory technology. Is this mainly for graphic intense application purposes, or for hardcore gamers?
Rick Bergman
256MB's are certainly going to be a major part of our line-up in the coming months. You will see this feature migrate down into our mainstream cards. While expensive at the beginning of 2003, memory prices continue to trend downwards. There are definite benefits to having the additional memory for the new games at higher resolutions. So if your budget allows, I'd start thinking about 256MB.
philly b
Hi Rick. Could you briefly discuss the positioning of ATI in the desktop marketplace (recent developments, market share)? Thanks!
Rick Bergman
Thanks --- three years ago, we committed ourselves to providing the industry's best performance. With the introduction of the 9700 Pro, there is no question that ATI has achieved this goal and continue to offer the best performance with 9800 Pro and now 9800 XT. As this technology cascades into additional markets, we are gaining market share. The 9600 is a great example where we now have tremendous demand. Our market share increased by 4% last quarter.
BillGateway
Why do you recommend me buy an ATI RADEON AGP Graphic Card than from any other AGP graphic card company?
Rick Bergman
ATI offers many advantages to the graphics buyer. For one, our visual quality is unsurpassed in the industry. This applies not only the gaming, but also the video area. Second, ATI has the best driver (Catalyst) with the highest stability, leading performance, great feature set and tremendous feedback mechanism for our fans. Third, we also offer the best customer support. There is a reason that ATI has been the leading graphics supplier for three decades.
foreigner
Will the HDTV or Digital TV revolution impact your company top line growth?
Rick Bergman
HDTV is playing a major role in our future plans. We have recently announced significant designs with Sony and Samsung in the DTV area -- a couple of good, consumer brands. As HDTV continues its steep growth, ATI will be a major player in this area. Of course, our graphics cards already support HDTV today and is one of the many reasons why people love our AIW cards.
El_Coyote
Are we going to see improvements in the Dual monitor solutions in 2004? Specifically I’d like to see dual DVI outputs and another overhaul of hydravision.
Rick Bergman
At this point, our consumer cards do not support dual DVI due to limited demand. While flat panel displays are certainly a major factor, many of the monitors continue to have analog inputs. Our FGL cards offer this support, as well as several of our OEM partners. We continue to improve our Hydravision support.
Nuuk1
I would like to know if ATI is working on producing PCI Express graphic cards to private consumers?
Rick Bergman
ATI demonstrated the first PCI Express graphics card in September with our partner, Intel. We expect to see a big ramp of PCI Express platforms in 2Q 2004. We absolutely will offer consumers the option to buy PCI Express cards in this same time period.
vschandra
Hi Rick, I applied for the physical design engineer position in ATI long back and my skills perfectly matches with the job description. But I haven't heard anything from them till now. Do you have any suggestions for me what to do?
Rick Bergman
Thanks for your interest in ATI. With the nature of our products and our recent success, we get a tremendous number of applications for our open positions. I would continue to monitor our website for opportunities, and if you have any personal references into ATI, that always helps.
El_Coyote
It has been nice to see ATI hasn’t jumped on the aggressive marketing bandwagon the way certain competitors have. Are you keeping that strategy? And what new initiatives are we going to see in the time to come?
Rick Bergman
Our philosophy at ATI is to focus on our positive attributes and meeting customer requirements. As the leader in the market, we don't see any reason to depart from this strategy. Some key initiatives include PCI Express and our continue evolution of our Catalyst software suite.
Goliath
I wish to buy a 9600XT next week and i would like to know which one is better the ATI or the ASUS? (better for HL2)
Rick Bergman
You can't really lose buying a card from either ATI or Asus. Both companies have a long history of strong technology and good support. If you are buying a card, I would certainly make sure that it is "certified by ATI" which means it has a certain level of quality.
Nicole
When will we see Xbox2? What graphics will be used in this platform?
Rick Bergman
Back in August, ATI and Microsoft jointly announced an agreement on future Xbox technologies. We are very excited about this relationship but you'll need to wait for Microsoft to announce any more specifics.
El_Coyote
If you could redo a single thing since the introduction of the first RADEON, what would it be?
Rick Bergman
Great question --- I would have focused our team on offering an entry level DX9 card earlier in 2003. We have just introduced the 9600SE, but I sure would have liked to have this solution at the beginning of the year.
Goliath
How do you plan dealing with the situation of more and more heated GPUs in the future? Some of your cards (ASUS) already have 2 fans on them.
Rick Bergman
The power of graphics chips continue to rise -- which drives more heat. There are a few innovations that will help in the future. For example, ATI used "Low K" in our semiconductor process which helped reduce power. Another example is ATI working with memory vendors on the development of GDDR3 -- this reduces the overall board level power.
ATI #1 Fan
Who are some of your leading card manufacturers?
Rick Bergman
As most people now understand, ATI decided to offer our graphics technology to a broad range of graphics add-in board manufacturers (AIBs) in 2001. Since that time, the majority of the leading manufacturers have embraced our solutions. This includes Asus, Sapphire, CP, Creative Labs, Hercules, VisionTek, Gigabyte, Gigacube, Tyan, Elsa, Diamond, Hightech and several others.
Ming
What will ATI announce for your 1st quarter earnings?
Rick Bergman
Our quarter concluded on November 30th and we are currently in a quiet period. Please review our last press announcement on revised guidance on November 17, and stay tuned for our announcement on 12/19.
jd2502001
NVIDIA nForce2 was declared the Best Chipset of 2003. What are some downsides to it comparing to the leading ati graphics card?
Rick Bergman
In that same award, ATI was recognized as the best graphics card manufacture, best innovation in graphics and best innovation in mobile technology -- a complete sweep of discrete graphics awards. The graphics performance in that chipset uses DX6/DX7 level of graphics. Our ATI graphics cards now support a minimum of DX8, and most cards are now DX9. The chipset also has very limited memory bandwidth which can really constrain performance. In summary, if you are interested in the best visual quality, ATI cards offer the best solution.
eddieO
In addition to the question Nicole asked about Xbox2 and ATI. What happened with Gamecube? What is the current role of the company you guys purchased a couple of years ago that created the graphics chip for the current Gamecube?
Rick Bergman
ATI continues to enjoy a royalty stream from Gamecube console games, as well as the actual games. We also announce a technology agreement in March with Nintendo for future areas. The company we acquired, ArtX, is now fully integrated into ATI. The employees are working on a range of solutions at ATI from our integrated chipsets, discrete PC graphics and console products.
RADEON Lover
Why do ATI cards perform better on DX9 applications than your competition?
Rick Bergman
ATI worked closely with Microsoft on DX9 from the very beginning. We optimized our architecture to provide the best "shader" performance for DX9. We have some of the leading experts in the industry working for ATI.
trevor
Will ATI continue to offer All In Wonder products?
Rick Bergman
The AIW 9800 is our seventh generation product. This entire category is getting more exciting with high resolution displays, HDTV, digital video, etc. ATI will continue to offer leading products in this area for years to come. The AIW cards have swept virtually every award in the industry.
zitadelle
What kind of future dealings have opened up since your deal with Microsoft for the Xbox 2? Are you perhaps expanding in another direction to include say, sound cards or anything?
Rick Bergman
Anyone who is working on advanced graphics or video solutions invariably gives ATI a call. So there are many opportunities that we are exploring in a number of new spaces. But I would not expect to see ATI sound cards in the future.
bweier
With the successful migration to .13 micron silicon and now low k .13 silicon, what will be the next transition for ATI cores besides PCI Express?
Rick Bergman
The next process node in the semiconductor industry is 90nm (.09 micron). We are actively working with our fab partners on this technology and expect to have solutions in this technology in the latter part of 2004.
bweier
There is a marked difference between the PR philosophy of Nvidia and ATI. Would you like to comment on the perception that ATI lacks the aggressiveness and effectiveness of the Nvidia marketing/PR team?
Rick Bergman
I believe that ATI has a great marketing and PR team. As stated earlier, we will focus on the positive attributes of our products and features that are important to our customers. While you can gain momentary advantage with "aggressive" tactics, I am interested in building long term credibility in our brand and products. Ultimately, I believe that consumers see through "aggressive" tactics and go with the solid company --- I certainly see this scenario playing out this year. Our marketing research indicates that we have the preferred brand among consumers, and they are buying our solutions.
bweier
Is the Catalyst team still committed to monthly driver updates? I for one am concerned that that is too fast and wonder how they can keep up that pace and is there really enough changes to warrant this frequency of driver updates?
Rick Bergman
Our Catalyst team is absolutely committed to monthly updates -- we polled our customers, and they requested this frequency. We have a substantial investment in automating our testing, and we regression test our drivers nightly. So we are certainly capable of maintaining this pace.
Nikki Rox
When will ATI be releasing the next generation of products?
Rick Bergman
We generally don't discuss unreleased products but rest assured, the ATI team is cranking away on a broad range of products. We will be releasing an entire family of products in the first half of 2004. While I can't give any specifics, ATI has been the clear technology and performance leader for quite some time and our next generation won't disappoint our fans.
ant
Hello Rick, How do you see the graphics market evolving and ATI's role in the home appliance marketplace?
Rick Bergman
I talked about the importance of PCI Express, DX10 and Longhorn as key inflection points in the graphics market. ATI will play a significant role in the home appliance market. Think about the possibilities - we are the leaders in graphics, video technologies and mobile solutions. ATI is the best positioned company in the industry to take advantage of the digital home.
davea
We just came back from I/ITSEC where we had a booth demoing real-time lighting and shadows to our military customers. Lots of interest there which was great. I want to know about helping developers and collaboration with ATI
Rick Bergman
We have two groups at ATI that can help developers. We have our ISV group that supports the software developers (there is a link on our website). And we recently started an "Embedded Display Group" to support customers that are in applications outside of the PC space --- including military customers. You can also find additional information on our website about this group.
Rick Bergman
Thanks for all the great questions this evening and your continued support of ATI. Our team is dedicated to offering the best solutions for the graphics industry and we have enjoyed a great 2003. I look forward to 2004, and a new wave of exciting products and applications for ATI.
Thanks again and have a great holiday.