We've been hearing that ATI has been having problems spinning its new Hypermemory marchitecture out the door, and that it has had to go back to the drawing board to have another fiddle with it. In the next two weeks, however, ATI will be taking to the road with working samples, to show the technology to a clamouring press. This, we are informed, means that we might just see boards with the technology shipping in time for the Christmas rush.

ATI wouldn't tell us anything about the Hypermemory technology, other than to confirm that it would be "showcasing" it in a couple of weeks time. System builders are screaming at ATI to get it out the door, since they want to start building Longhorn-compliant DX9 PCs for corporate customers.

A pre-Christmas launch would be good news for ATI, which is sitting pretty after turning over a big fat wodge of cash this year, $2.2bn to be precise. The Mercury figures that showed ATI beating Nvidia in mid-range and low-end graphics cards will no doubt be bolstered again next quarter if ATI can ship this technology in time. ATI spinsters have been busy explaining to key customers that it has the largest market share in discrete graphics according to those Mercury numbers, after it toppled Nvidia last quarter.

ATI first paper-launched this technology way back through the mists of time - September to be precise. Utilising PCI Express, graphics cards using the technology are able to use system memory to store textures and to enable graphics processing.

This means that graphics cards can be shipped with less RAM, cutting costs.


Source : TheInquirer