There were a lot of concerns about ATI Technologies’ and Silicon Integrated Systems’ licenses to sell 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus-supporting chipsets. As we have told you a number of times already, Intel wants its partners to license every new speed-grade of its own Quad Pumped Bus what gives the world’s largest microprocessor maker the ability to control the chipset market for its Pentium 4 processors. Presumably, Intel Corporation will not license its 800MHz QPB in the first half of the year, but is likely to give SiS and ATI an opportunity to enter this market in the second half.

An ATI Technologies’ official said during the company’s second fiscal quarter conference call that the firm plans to start selling its next-generation chipsets for Intel Pentium 4 platform in the second half of the year, right after Intel’s Springdale (i865) and Canterwood (i875P) chipsets are launched.

We can assume that Intel simply does not want to have any rivals on the chipset market for 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus processors, as initially such products will only allocate approximately 20% of all Intel Pentium 4 CPUs shipped in the second calendar quarter. In the third and the fourth quarters the company plans to ship 35% and 60% respectively of all its Pentium 4 chips with 800MHz QPB and the Hyper-Threading technology support. With more advanced CPUs shipped into the market there will be more space to compete for three companies, especially in the high-end market segment.

Reportedly, SiS as well as ATI will get the licenses on the 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus by the second half of the year, nevertheless, no officials from ATI Technologies or SiS confirmed this.

Provided that Intel supplies significant number of the Pentium 4 processors with 800MHz QPB and the Hyper-Threading support into retail channel, VIA Technologies and its mainboard partners are likely to enjoy slight rise in their sales next calendar quarter (simply because Intel and VIA will be the only companies to sell appropriate chipsets in the Q2), however, in the second half their market share will decrease, as there will be fierce competition between Intel’s, ATI’s and SiS’ core-logic sets sold legally and presented by various mainboard makers for all market segments.