ATI, graphics business unit of Advanced Micro Devices, demonstrated the world’s first DirectX 11-capable graphics processing unit (GPU) at Computex Taipei 2009, exactly a year ago from today. The first ATI DirectX 11 chips - code-named Evergreen - were launched in late Septmber, 2009, and so far ATI has shipped more than eleven million of DX11 graphics chips.

“We have shipped over eleven DirectX 11 GPUs since we launched in the fall. It is a huge technology effect. Microsoft has told us that the transition to DirectX 11 has been the fastest transition for DirectX ever,” said Leslie Sobon, vice president of worldwide product marketing at AMD, during a press event at Computex Taipei.

According to ATI’s arch-rival Nvidia Corp. itself and independent analysts, Nvidia shipped around 400 thousand DirectX 11-capable graphics till mid-May 2010.

At present ATI is the only provider of desktop and mobile top-to-bottom DirectX 11 solutions. The main competitor – Nvidia – only ships graphics and computing solutions powered by the code-named GF100 chip, the monster, which contains over three billion of transistors and that is very expensive to manufacture. Nvidia’s mainstream DirectX 11 solutions that belong to Fermi generation are projected to launch in summer and fall of 2010.

Tags: ATI, AMD, Radeon, Evergreen, 40nm, Cypress, Juniper, Hemlock, Redwood