ATI's R520 is codenamed Fudo

FUDO IS A NAME that has been spoken in fear in ATI offices and whenever I meet any of ATI's employees they are very careful when they talk to me.

Codenaming a future chip Fudo is quite shocking for me. It's not everyday that you can say that chip is called after you or after your nickname, even if you share that one with some not so well known philosopher.

It took quite some time to validate the news and now I can certainly say that the future generation 2005 product is codenamed Fudo. Last time, the R420 was codenamed Loki and ATI was terrified to learn the fact that we knew about it.

R520 is the next chip that will come after R480 Q4 speed update of R420/423 marchitecture and it will represent the chip with new features with at least Shader model 3.0 support if not even more advanced - I mean programmable shader model. I guess it won't be just re-named R400 as it has to add some more features to compete with Nvidia's NV50.

If you are called Fuad in my country, Bosnia and Herzegovina you will get nick name Fudo. Fuad actually means heart in the Arabic language and it's not as common a name in Bosnia as Sam is in US but I know quite a few Fuad's or should I say Fudo's.

From left to right, girl, girl, Japanese philospher, girl, girl

The other possibility is that ATI has nicknamed its future chip after the Japanese philosopher, Fudo, who you can read about here.

Thank you I am honoured ATI, please send me a big fat cheque in the post. µ