by Anton Shilov
07/30/2006 | 11:12 PM
As ATI Technologies is preparing to become an integral part of Advanced Micro Devices, rivals of the newly formed enterprise reportedly talk about enablement of multi-GPU supporting technology SLI on chipsets from Intel Corp. to provide enthusiasts a platform with leading performance and features.
<%BANNER[article]%>Citing industry sources, DigiTimes web-site has reported that Nvidia would “soon announce that it will allow support of its SLI technology on Intel’s chipset platforms”. The two companies, it is said, had already met to discuss the “partnership” and possibilities to avoid “negative impact” from ATI-AMD transaction, even though, no concrete details are available at this time.
It is not a secret that support of multi-GPU technologies, such as ATI’s CrossFire and Nvidia’s SLI, by various chipsets is mainly associated with reprogrammable PCI Express lanes, available in several core-logic devices, including Intel’s premier 955X and 975X, as well as support from the drivers. So far Nvidia did not allow any chipsets, but its own, to work with two of its GeForce GPUs in SLI mode.
While Nvidia has a fully-integrated platform to support Intel Core 2 Duo and SLI technology, Intel may not like the fact that top-of-the-range computers with its chipsets and Core 2 Duo microprocessors are powered with the CrossFire technology from AMD-ATI, therefore, the world’s largest chipmaker may be interested in such talks. Nvidia, however, may be interested in downplaying CrossFire and receiving certain endorsement quotes from Intel Corp.
Earlier it was reported that Intel and Nvidia had agreed to support SLI technology on the mobile Intel 945 GM/PM chipsets, but no official confirmation followed.
Neither Intel, nor Nvidia commented on the news-story.