Sometimes it is very interesting to watch how two arch-rivals try to figurally bite each-other. We saw it with AMD and Intel, now we see this in case of ATI Technologies and NVIDIA.

NVIDIA’s own CEO Jen-Hsun Huang recently gave an interview to The Mercury News and to acknowledge that his company will be back on top soon said the following: “Tiger Woods doesn't win every day. We don't deny that ATI has a wonderful product and it took the performance lead from us. But if they think they're going to hold onto it, they're smoking something hallucinogenic.”

I have no idea if all ATI Technologies’ employees including the top guys like KY Ho and David Orton really smoke something hallucinogenic, as Mr. Jen-Hsun Huang believes, but it seems that ATI fellows also suspect a company whose corporate colour is green in addiction to opium. During GDC earlier this month, ATI demonstrated a number of T-Shirts with an interesting text typed on them.

The phrase “pipe dream” means the dreams experienced by smokers of opium pipes, according to this online phrase finder.

Among DirectX 9.0-supporting GPUs, ATI Technologies’ RADEON 9500 PRO, 9700 PRO and 9800 PRO implement 8 rendering pipelines, NVIDIA’s GeForce FX 5800 and 5600 chips only feature 4 of them, according to various reports.

Typing the mentioned phrase in green ATI may have alluded at NVIDIA, who directly stated that the whole ATI is smoking something hallucinogenic. Perhaps in this way ATI’s employees answer to the suggestion of the arch-rival corporation’s CEO, but with no exact names involved.

PS. Are they both thinking that the other party is based in Holland to have legal rights to smoke “something hallucinogenic”?

PPS. Be sure to read this interview with Jen-Hsun Huang as well as check this Japanese web-site for report from GDC.