Trident sneaks a march on Nvidia

TRIDENT TOLD US that its upcoming XP4 chips will be developed with 0.13µ manufacturing process technology.

And if the company manages to ship cards featuring the chip in mid October as initially planned, Trident's will be first 0.13 micron graphics chip on market, ousting Nvidia's NV30 into second spot.

We learned that Trident is making its chips in UMC's foundry in Taiwan - the world's second biggest semiconductor foundry that is obviously a nose ahead in this 0.13 race.

You may remember that Nvidia claimed many times that its NV30 is scheduled for the Xmas season, simply because it uses a rival foundry - the largest in the world - owned by TSMC, which could not make this processor work before.

So Trident believes that it will have first 0.13 GPU on the market which makes their arrival even more remarkable in this ATI vs Nvidia game.

A spokesman for Trident, however said: "Trident is less concerned with beating Nvidia to use 0.13µ technology and more concerned at getting a value-for-money product into the market place."

Its all about Trident right now. We can't wait to test their little baby. µ