Sharky Extreme: We have heard various rumors about the RADEON MAXX project being cancelled. We had initially hoped the dual-chip RADEON would compete well in the high-end arena. Can you please explain the status of the MAXX and why it may be beneficial to pursue a next-generation chip rather than an AFR-capable RADEON?

Dave Orton: ATI developed the Fury MAXX about one year ago. We continue to believe that some customers can benefit from dual-chip performance. We received a lot of positive feedback regarding the Fury MAXX. MAXX technology is something that we are continuing to develop and we plan to have an even better MAXX this year. While it is important to continue to develop our MAXX technology, it is even more important to ensure that ATI's single asic technology is leading the industry in features, performance and time to market.

Sharky Extreme: In the past, ATI has been chastised for poor driver development. What changes have been made to ensure that the driver model in place remains robust for all future ATI products? Indeed our own in-house testing has revealed what appears to be support for dual-chip solutions already built into the driver. Can you confirm?

Dave Orton: ATI continues to strive to deliver the highest quality and performance in our drivers. Radeon has made a significant improvement in the quality of our s/w drivers, and we will continue to raise the bar for the industry. The improvements are attributed to our processes, our architecture, and our people. We are building a universal driver architecture that will allow all Radeon products and all future generations to build on the strength of the Radeon drivers. We have received good feedback on the quality of Radeon drivers. We intend to build on this trend. In terms of support for dual-asic solutions - ATI is committed to MAXX technology. The Radeon driver was developed with these plans in mind.

Sharky Extreme: We've seen some early tests of ATI's T&L capable chipset and have been rather impressed. When do you expect this part to ship, and how will it fare in a market populated by the i815E and PM133/KM133?

Dave Orton: ATI is shipping our Aladdin 7 product through ALI's partnership for the K6 processors. AMD is EOLing these processors, but the 100MHZ version of our first integrated product, called S1370TL, is shipping to a few customers in Taiwan. We will announce and ship our next generation integrated part in 2001.

ATI is working on bringing high quality graphics to the value PC market. With ATI solutions, value customers get the advantage of the low cost PC along with high performing graphics. Our early customer feedback indicates that customers are thrilled with the new paradigm.

Sharky Extreme: Can we expect a notebook variation of the RADEON? How do you intend to solidify your position in the notebook market? What kind of timeline should gamers looking for a "Mobile RADEON" expect to wait for such a part?

Dave Orton: From its inception, the Radeon was designed with the idea of it going "mobile." The Radeon is a modular platform allowing ATI to rapidly deploy mobile products with the right set of features for the different segments in mobile. A number of Mobility products utilizing the Radeon platform are under development and sampling to our customers today. The Mobile variant of the Radeon product will be announced in 2001 when our customers are ready to ship their products.