Silicon Integrated Systems Inc.'s Xabre II, due early next year, will attempt to challenge Nvidia and ATI Technologies with a DirectX 9.0-compatible graphics chip.

Although the company's mainstream Xabre products are still relatively new to the market, the company said it intends to make a run at the twin deities of the PC graphics world, ATI Technologies and Nvidia Corp. "We wish to extend the brand," said Chris Lin, vice-president of SIS' multimedia product division.

During the first quarter of 2003, SIS intends to ship the second-generation Xabre part, featuring support for the pixel and vertex shaders version 2.0 supported by Microsoft's DirectX 9.0 API. Kim said the part will include 8 pixel pipelines, a technology the company is already calling "OctaPipe".

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