ATI Technologies has won the majority of notebook designs equipped with DirectX 9.0 graphics systems, it transpired today. 37 system designs featuring technology from the Markham, Ontario-based graphics giant are shipping now, while the main rival - NVIDIA Corporation – has less than 20 design wins in its mobile DirectX 9 portfolio.

With only one MOBILITY RADEON 9600 visual processing unit available in a number of versions for various needs, ATI managed to ink contracts with 18 leading notebook OEMs, such as Actebis, Alienware, Apple, Eurocom, Fujitsu, Fujitsu-Siemens, Gateway, Gericom, HP, Hypersonic, IBM, Medion, Multivision, Packard Bell, Prostar, Sager, and VoodooPC. All these companies are able to offer 37 different mobile PC with different configurations designed for variety of purposes, including systems for desktop computer replacement, as well as truly mobile powerful workstations you can always take with you, such as HP nw8000 with professional version of the MOBILITY RADEON 9600 announced yesterday.

NVIDIA Corporation has about 16 design wins not counting small white box vendors with its GeForce FX Go5600 and GeForce FX Go5200 GPUs also available in different flavours to reflect customers’ requirements. NVIDIA has not announced any design wins with its professional Quadro FX Go700 so far. From 8 to 10 notebook OEMs now supply NVIDIA’s mobile DirectX 9.0 products, according to the company’s estimates. The list of NVIDIA’s DirectX 9.0 mobile partners includes Apple, Alienware, Dell, HP, Medion, Toshiba, Sony and some smaller firms.

Both leading graphics companies unleashed their mobile graphics processors with DirectX 9.0 and some other modern technologies support at CeBIT 2003 in March, but ATI Technologies has been traditionally more successful with its solution for mobile computers than its rival.

The Santa Clara, California-based company hopes to land some more orders on its mobile GeForce FX Go graphics with its next-generation part code-named NV36M to be announced on Monday, the 17^th November of 2003.

In the third quarter of 2003 ATI maintained its leadership position with 71% share in mobile standalone graphics chip market, according to Mercury Research. NVIDIA held 21% of the market, XGI (SiS’ and Trident’s shares included) had 6%, Silicon Motion and VIA supplied 2% of mobile GPUs.

ATI, however, still pins a lot of hopes on its 0.13 micron MOBILITY RADEON 9600 graphics processor with 4 rendering pipelines, 2 geometry engines and AGP 8x interface: “MOBILITY RADEON 9600 processors continue to be chosen by our customers for 2004 performance and mainstream consumer and commercial notebook designs, even against unannounced next-generation competing solutions,” said David Cummings, Director of Marketing, Mobile Products for ATI Technologies.