| Q&A |
 Daniel
Shapiro
S. Marketing Manager from ATI Santa Clara office
26/08/03 |
| Q1 |
What
are the main differences between desktop and workstation cards
? |
| A1 |
While
the Radeon and FireGL products are based on the same high
bandwidth, parallel processing architecture, there are numerous
differences between them. FireGL products
are tuned, tested and certified for professional applications.
Because we optimize certain OpenGL or DirectX 9 features with
the FireGL drivers, it is not uncommon for a FireGL to run
at over 2x or 3x the performance of a similarly configured
Radeon. For a complete list of features and product specs,
please visit www.ati.com/FireGL.
FireGL products are designed with workstation application
functionality in mind:
- Line draw performance
- Anti-Alias line quality and performance
- Open GL 'immediate mode'
- Performance in windowed mode and full screen mode
- Performance in high resolution screen settings
- Fixed Function Vertex Transform performance.
In addition, most FireGL boards have dual DVI (standard digital
flat panel interface) to support dual-display configurations.
FireGL customers receive free access to a dedicated workstation
technical support team that are trained on the leading professional
applications. FireGL customers are eligible for advanced replacement
option when having product repaired.
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| Q2 |
What
does it mean when a professionnal graphic card is certified
for a 3D/CAD software ? |
| A2 |
The
certification of FireGL accelerators by software application
vendors assures professional engineers, designers and animators
that the FireGL line delivers a stable and high performance
workstation graphics environment on both Windows and Linux platforms.
The rigorous and exacting certification processes,
conducted by software vendors, puts ATI's FireGL graphics accelerators
up against a battery of simulations and real-world scenarios,
ensuring compatibility and stability required by workstation
users. ATI's quality assurance engineers also carry out comprehensive
compliance, performance and functionality verification tests,
and work closely with application and workstation vendors to
refine the FireGL products, thereby creating the highest level
of reliability and performance. |
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| Q3 |
ATI
is considered to offer the best 3D performances with the Radeon
9700/9800 pro for the consumer market, what about the professionnal
3D/CAD market ? Is ATI comming back in this market (nVidia Quadro
represents more than 50%of the sales in 2002) ? |
| A3 |
With
a complete top-to-bottom line of workstation graphics accelerators,
ATI now has products that compete and win in every price band.
Additionally, the FireGL product line supports OpenGL and DX9
and have hardware accelerated geometry even at the entry-level
product range with the FireGL T2. Not all of our competitors
can say that. ATI has the leading price performance solutions
for workstation customers. |
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| Q4 |
CAD
files are often very large (millions of polygon), even last
generation of 3D chips remain slow for this kind of datas. I'm
afraid that 3D chip makers are more and more focus on visual
effects than increasing raw performances (triangle/sec), is
that true ? |
| A4 |
Visual
effects are important, but ATI realizes that geometry can be
a gating factor. Our high-end solutions feature four parallel
geometry engines and eight parallel rendering pipelines and
scale down to two geometry engines and four rendering pipelines.
Image quality is consistent across the entire product line and
geometry performance varies at various price bands. We also
utilize a 256-bit memory bandwidth, twice that of our competition,
to deliver even higher performance when transferring large amounts
of data. |
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| Q5 |
Does
ATI have professionnal chip for notebook ? |
| A5 |
Yes.
The MOBILITY FireGL line of products is used in mobile workstations
from the top OEMs. New announcements will be forthcoming in
the next several months highlighting some dramatic breakthroughs
for mobile computing in the CAD and DCC markets. |
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| Q6 |
The
new FireGLX1 required an AGP PRO 50 bus, is there a lot of motherboard
that integrate such a bus ? |
| A6 |
The
FireGL X1-256p requires an AGP Pro 50 bus. This was a request
of one of our strategic OEM partners, HP, as several of their
workstation utilize this bus. All other FireGL products, including
the FireGL X1-128, FireGL T2-128 and FireGL X2-256 are AGP 8X/4X.
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| Q7 |
Do
you consider PCI-express bus as a good alternative to AGP ?
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| A7 |
We
are unable to comment on unannounced products, but we believe
the industry as a whole will benefit from the increased bandwidth
that will be available within the system. ATI will support new
industry standards. |
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| Q8 |
ATI
is involved in handheld devices, do you plan to develop a 3D
hardware support for MPEG 4.0 Video and 3D fonctionnalities
? |
| A8 |
Again,
we cannot comment on unannounced products. |
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| Q9 |
An
oportunity to increase the performances of 3D adaptators is
using several 3D chips working together (Ethan & Sutherland
is currently using this shema with ATI chips). Why dont you
use this possibility ? |
| A9 |
Customers
of ours, including Evans & Sutherland and SGI are developing
products based on multiple FireGL chips and/or boards. This
is their area of expertise, and we partner with them to best
serve these specialized visualization markets. What is interesting
to note that these companies used be known for their expertise
in high end graphics, but not rely on ATI's superior graphics
technology. |
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| Q10 |
ATI
has create RenderMonkey an interface that help developers to
easily generate their own shaders. Is RenderMonkey compatible
with 3D Labs and nVidia graphics adaptators ? What are the benefits
of RenderMonkey ? |
| A10 |
RenderMonkey
is simple a development testing tool for shaders. It supports
both OpenGL Shading Language and DirectX 9 HLSL, so it is not
ATI specific. ATI's approach to shaders and real-time rendering
is to support industry standards, not proprietary languages.
To that end, RenderMonkey is not a product, but instead we are
working with ISVs like Alias, Softimage and Discreet to incorporate
this high end shading technology directly into their applications.
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| Q11 |
What
about your realtime polygon subdivision technologies (rt-patch)
? |
| A11 |
TRUFORM
2.0 offers more flexible and powerful tessellation options
than the original TRUFORM technology. Rather than being limited
to fixed tessellation levels (1, 2, 3, etc.), it supports
continuous tessellation, which allows floating point fractional
tessellation levels for smoother transitions. An adaptive
tessellation option is also supported, which dynamically adjusts
the tessellation level of a surface
depending on the distance from the viewer. Thus, nearby surfaces
will have more polygons and more detail, while distant surfaces
will have less.
TRUFORM
2.0 also supports displacement mapping, a technique that can
be used to provide more control over the shape of 3D objects
and surfaces. It works by modifying the positions of vertices
according to values sampled from a special type of texture
called a displacement map. The visual effect is similar to
bump mapping, but much more realistic and detailed.
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| Q12 |
Today
3D chips render in hardware only triangles, will they be able
to handle - in hardware - NURBS or Voxel (Pixel3D) ? |
| A12 |
Sorry,
unable to comment on future products. |
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| Q13 |
MAYA
5.0 introduce a 3D render via graphics processor. Is this fonction
avaliable with ATI cards ? Will you improve this 3D render capabilities
to reinforce realism ? |
| A13 |
Hardware
rendering is available running Maya 5.0 on our FireGL T2, FireGL
Z1, FireGL X1, and FireGL X2 products. At Siggraph 2003
ATI and Alias announced and demonstrated the ability to use
FireGL products to perform hardware accelerated rendering directly
from within the application viewport. This is a tremendous productivity
boost to animators and designers. No longer do they have to
animate in the dark, and wait for rendering, but can manipulate
objects, lights and scenes in real-time, in a fully shaded/rendered
view. |
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