ATI enters the platform game

Chip companies may change products, but they don’t change their core business model - which is to sell more chips every year. A key strategy to increase sales is to create complete platforms : Intel pioneered that idea with Centrino and ATI hopes that Avivo can succeed in the same way. We talked to Godfrey Cheng, ATI’s Director of Marketing, for Multimedia Products, about what Avivo will bring to consumers.

TG Daily : Can you describe Avivo in just a few words ?

Cheng : Avivo is a cross-platform marketing brand. It basically consists of video and display technologies. So, if we look at other cross-platform technologies in the industry, we come up with Centrino and Viiv. And Avivo is a brand very similar to that.

TG Daily : What is the key hardware covering Avivo technology ?

Cheng : The key components are both the Radeon and Theater chips right now. But moving forward, we really focus our investment on each step in the pipeline. Every new ATI product from now on will include Avivo functionality.

Godfrey Cheng

TG Daily : What is the key functionality and benefit for consumers of this platform ?

Cheng : We looked at the MC PC revolution. The demand for crisp video and sharp displays definitely are climbing. Avivo takes those requirements and turn those into products. So its not fluff and pluff marketing show, but these are real products. On the display side we are making sure that you are able to decode the new formats properly, such as Blu-ray and HD DVD. Then, you are able to enjoy them with proper DRM and then you display them on new consumer level TVs or panels.

When we started designing the technology three to four years ago, we knew we wanted lots of new technologies in the chip to improve the quality and the experience of the Media PC. Now we are at a point where those points are starting to come to life and we something that ties all those little features that create that experience together. And that’s what Avivo is.

TG Daily : Improving video quality seems to get more and more important in your industry. Your competition has been focusing on this feature for some time now. How does Avivo differentiate itself from what is available today ?

Cheng : The only thing that it has going for it at this time is de-interlacing, which is just one aspect of the display pipeline. That appears to be the priority there. But with Avivo, we’ve improved everything before that in the video pipeline.

Starting with the Theater 550 Pro, we have features inside there which include 3D comp filtering or Hardware MPEP2 compression. There’s a whole host of features in each set of the pipeline that add up to show we are different, because of our expertise in each step along the way.

TG Daily : What role has H.264 format video compression in Avivo ?

Part of the Avivo mandate to deliver all forms of video to the PC market. H.264 plays into this, because this is the new format we need to focus on. Avivo will have the capability to accelerate H.264 playback. Back at Computex earlier this year, we demonstrated an R520 playing the highest spec of the Blu-ray requirement, which is a 40 Mbit per second bitrate. And next year we will deliver Blue-ray and HD DVD solutions to the market.

TG Daily : Will all new cards of the Radeon family be able to play H.264 compressed HD content at this bitrate ?

Cheng : We are still tweaking the finals. Certainly, with the R520 [X1800XT] you will be able to do up to 1080p [1920x1080 pixels]. If you look at the other cards, the RW530 [X1600XT] will be able to do at least 720p [1280 x 720 pixel]. We are focusing the R515 [X1300] solution on the SD [standard definition] resolution of H.264.

TG Daily : Is Avivo purely video focused or do you see any other applications that can advantage of this technology ?

Cheng : The feature set is primarily video-focused. But there are "features of the features" that actually benefit other applications besides just video. For instant, the new display products, the new Radeon cards, have a 10-bit display engine. This means that in previous products all the data in the display engine was truncated to 8 bits than output. In Avivo we maintain higher precision, which also translates in higher image quality for example in video in 3D games.

TG Daily : What, in your opinion, will determine the success of Avivo ?

Cheng : As anything, you have to invest in it. We are not just doing press releases and then walk away from it. Avivo is going to be a brand much like Radeon. We are in this for the long run.

TG Daily : Mr. Cheng, thank you for your time.