X-bit labs

ATI CrossFire Technology Remains Open.

Category: Chipsets

by Anton Shilov

[ 12/20/2007 | 07:25 PM ]

ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, said on Thursday that it remained committed to its open eco-system strategy with multi-GPU technology. In fact,  every company, including Intel Corp., might get the ability to use the “ATI CrossFire” logotype to push their platforms, provided that they had passed a validation process.

“We remain committed to an open ATI CrossFire eco-system,” said Chris Hook, a spokesperson for AMD.

ATI CrossFire and ATI CrossFireX are multi-GPU technologies that allow several graphics processing units to work in team to double or even triple the speed of a single high-end graphics accelerator.

Intel Corp. is the arch-rival of AMD in the market of x86 central processing units (CPUs). Besides microprocessors, Intel competes against AMD with its chipsets featuring built-in graphics cores. Still, all current Intel chipsets that have two PCI Express controllers as well as future chipsets, such as Intel X48 and P45, that have reportedly passed the validation tests of AMD and can support ATI CrossFire or ATI CrossFireX multi graphics chip technology.

“We are constantly working with the third-party companies, including Intel,” said Godfrey Cheng, who is in charge of ATI CrossFire multi-GPU technology at AMD.

There's no license fee for ATI CrossFire technology, the company said.

ATI CrossFireX is an improved version ATI CrossFire multi-GPU technology that has features like 3-way, 4-way GPU rendering on a single monitor.