Xabre Graphics Inc., a subsidiary of Silicon Integrated Systems, last week signed distributional agreements with three Asian distributors of chips intended for use in personal computers.

will from now sell a considerable part of XGI’s Xabre graphics processors to graphics cards manufacturers and system integrators across the whole Asia. This does not mean that XGI will cease to support the existing add-in-board partners, but it means that the mentioned ASIC distributors will seek for more clients for the Hsinchu, Taiwan-based graphics company.

NVIDIA and ATI Technologies also use the same structure of selling graphics processors. Substantial part of GPU products goes to large IC distributors, while another is supplied to big manufacturers of mainboards and graphics cards. Most of not large clients of ATI and NVIDIA buy graphics processors from such IC-stocking representatives.

NVIDIA’s IC distributors are Edom Technology and Atlantic Semiconductor. ATI Technologies’ major distributors include Althon, D & H, Ingram Micro and Tech Data.

XGI currently offers entry-level DirectX 8.1-compliant Xabre graphics processors and is expected to release entry-level and mainstream DirectX 9.0-supporting Xabre II GPUs this year. May the new distributional partners mean that the newcomers will emerge very soon?