ATI outlines Avivo, dual transmitter strategies

WE HAD the opportunity to talk to Mr. Godfrey Cheng Director of Marketing, Multimedia Product at ATI. Here's what we said:

INQ Does ATI need to buy, use any third party chip to have support for DUAL Transmitter?

CHENG The Radeon X1800, X1600 and X1300 all support at least one dual-link TMDS transmitter and depending on PCB options (i.e. what a partner or an OEM chooses) we can support 2 Dual Link TMDS transmitters. On our high-end cards like the Radeon X1800XT, we enable both the 2 Integrated Dual Link TMDS transmitters out of the box so there is no need for any third party silicon. Practically, this means that we can drive 2 of those awesome 30 inch Apple Cinema displays at its native resolution of 2560 X 1600 without third party silicon. Even with our value X1300, we offer display features that are much more advanced than competitive high-end graphics cards.

ATI also offers HDCP protection for DVI without using any extraneous third party silicon for those OEMs who want it. As you may know, we have leading technologies in the Consumer Electronics space where we have shipped millions of HDCP enabled solutions. We are able to leverage these CE technologies in the PC space. This means our HDCP solution that we will be shipping is proven and rock solid.

INQ What is the key strongpoint of AVIVO compared to competition?

CHENG Avivo is a platform of technologies. Avivo is a set of technologies that seek to perfect video and display quality. All video & images must go through a series of steps to be displayed, any flaws or deficiencies in any of these steps means the video will degrade by the time it is displayed - video quality is very much determined by the weakest link…… ATI will systematically invest in each of these different steps to deliver the best available video quality by eliminating all the “weak links”. This time, we may have focused on HD H.264 decode and display capabilities of our new Radeons, we could very well launch new TV tuner, new mobile or new chipset technologies in the next Avivo refresh.

If I had to compare Avivo against our competition, I would say that our esteemed competition is very much focused on DVD playback only while not addressing other critical parts of the video and display pipeline. Avivo is more comprehensive and much more robust, we seek to systematically address each and every step along the way.

I encourage your readers to visit ati.com to see what we mean by video and display perfection.

INQ What is the CPU utilization when playing HD content on R520, 530 and 515 cards?

CHENG At Computex this year, we demonstrated a R520 decoding a 1080i HD H.264 stream at 30% CPU utilization on a modest P4 3.6Ghz. This clearly demonstrates the power of the new Radeon X1K architecture. We are not finished optimizing our performance in our family. Our goal is to deliver HD top-to-bottom. We only get better from here.

INQ What improvements does ATI have on the map for video playback quality?

CHENG Video Quality should be viewed very much like 3D performance, both improve over time. In our first product release of the X1K family, we were very much focused on 3D performance so the video quality has not yet been tuned. We know with 100% certainty we have the best video & display hardware. So our customers can expect gradual and significant improvements in video quality and performance with every Catalyst release. ATI will deliver the best video quality across the board and top-to-bottom.

INQ How does the consumer see the benefits of the Avivo 10-bit display pipe?

CHENG The short non-technical answer is that the consumer will see much less color banding, any Radeon with Avivo technology can display 64 times the number colors over our competitor's 8-bit solutions. This is especially noticeable on notebook displays and "gaming" LCDs that sacrifice color depth for speed.

The dirty secret is that most of the Desktop and Notebook panels today are 8-bit and 6-bit, respectively. How our 10-bit display pipes benefit these panels is that we have a technology called the Advanced Dithering Engine, which dithers our true 10-bit data down to the 8-bit and 6-bit panels. So even if you have an 8-bit or 6-bit panel today, our 10-bit pipes offer much more precise and faithful reproduction of video and still images. Of course, we are seeing many new native 10-bit panels coming out this year and we will be able to support them natively.

INQ How does ATI continue to innovate in the area of video?

CHENG Fudo, how am I supposed to answer this?? In addition to delivering the best available video and display quality, our customers should expect that ATI is going to lead the industry in the High Definition revolution, HDTV, Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Maybe I will answer some more questions about these topics sooner than some expect. µ