Interview with ATI's soon-to-be CEO Dave Orton

wolfgang writes "Tom's Hardware has published an interview with Dave Orton, who will become ATI's next CEO in June. Orton talks about the transformation of the company within the last three years, the current competition with Nvidia and what can be expected from graphic chipsets in the near future. Orton believes that ATI can grab more than 50 percent market share in the desktop market in the short term."

My money's on embedded devices

[ObviousGuy]

Powering those little cable boxes and HDD recorders is where the money lies in the near to mid-term.

The desktop is for all intents and purposes a locked up market. Get a deal with Intel to fry your chip onto the mobos and you're home free.

But the embedded world is still the Wild West of technology.

Re:Well...

[Kenja]

"What they really need to do is release better Linux drivers, and care more about Linux support in general."

Why? What's the benefit to them? Not a troll, just playing devils advocate.

Re:Well...

[Adriax]

Give it time, as more games come out with linux ports, they'll have to pay more attention to linux drivers if they want to compete with nvidia.

Right.

[AugstWest]

Orton believes that ATI can grab more than 50 percent market share in the desktop market in the short term.

That's exactly the kind of BS that CEOs are paid to spew. Does he honestly believe they'll capture more than 50% of the market, or is that the line he's feeding to the board of directors to get the CEO position, which he'll lose when the board gets sick of the BS?

One video card company cannot gain more than 50% of today's market. It's just not possible.

Goodwill

[wawannem]

Goodwill with the tech crowd will go a long way. There are some companies that play nice with our crowd and prosper from it... Apple for one has tried to deliver what we want and now they are doing better than they did 4 years ago.

Although, I think we're both just feeding the troll.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, they could just let Linux folks write em themselves and save money.

Exactly.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Why? What's the benefit to them?Yes, exactly. What I think will drive ATI to release better Linux drivers is seeing more *commercial* applications that run on Linux and require the cards that ATI makes. There is no point to ATI to invest lots of time / money in developing drivers for a non-existent market. Translation: Games, we need to see more *commercially* released GAMES for Linux.

Re:My money's on embedded devices

[TrueBuckeye]

I would disagree that the desktop is locked up. Over the past 7 years I have bought 5 video cards, only 2 of them from the same company. 2 of the makers no longer exist at least in the market (Sierra and Voodoo) and I have gone back and forth over the past few years between Nvidia and ATI depending on who has the better product at the time.

And as mentioned in the article, the desktop market is now decided in large part by who controls the high end segment, which is a constant battle between the two (although ATI has had the advantage for the past 12-18 months).

It is far from decided yet. Remember Voodoo went from market leader to bankrupt in about a year and a half.

Market Share?

[lrt512]

To capture market share, they need to figure out how to write drivers that don't crash 50% of the systems they're installed on. I've flirted with ATI on and off since 1989, and have *never* had a stable system with one of their cards installed.

Re:Well...

[Daemonik]

For one, the consumer electronics market is wide open.

Most CE products are made in Japan, Korea and China, all countries with a healthy distrust of Microsoft.

They just agreed to jointly develop Linux for their markets.

Re:Right.

[musikit]

umm i'm no expect here but don't the Gamecubes use a ATI chip? aren't the Xbox2s gonna be using a ATI chip? no clue what chip the PS2 uses but i could have swarn all 3 systems are designing for ATI chips on the next gen consoles....

given the fact that console gaming is much larger then PC gaming and the fact that the consoles are getting to basically be full blow PCs with special SW wouldn't ATI hold a much larger then 50% marketshare?

Re:Well...

[JDevers]

Only the most recent? Ati supports everything from the 8500 up (two generations back, maybe more depending on how you count them). More importantly though is everything OLDER than the 8500 is supported by true open source drivers by the community.

An 8500 would actually be a decent card to look at, it is DX 8 class but is reasonably fast and should be VERY cheap to obtain...

Re:My money's on embedded devices

[TrueBuckeye]

Yeah, sorry...3dfx. Need more coffee.

I attribute the top-dog buying to the hardware geeks (I include myself in this category somewhat).

What I have seen, unsupported by anything but anecdotal evidence, is that a geek goes out and gets a top-notch video card, say the ATI 9800XT a month or so ago. For every geek who knows hardware in and out, there are probably 5 normal people who rely on geeks to suggest hardware to them. Whether it is due to brand loyalty or a desire to support hardware that they are familiar with, many geeks will then recommend if not the same card they have, then often the same brand. So the geek who has a 9800XT will often recommend a 9600 or some other ATI product.

By pleasing the geeks with good hardware, support, and drivers, the manufacturer can sell many more products due to this effect. AMD saw the same thing when they released unlocked, powerful, and cheap cpu's 4 or 5 years ago while Intel was locking theirs down tighter and tighter. The geeks started supporting AMD more and more, so non-geeks began to buy non-Intel cpu's.