United Microelectronics Corp., a leading contract maker of semiconductors, said Monday that it had shipped one million of code-named RV516 graphics chips to ATI Technologies, a leading supplier of graphics components. Adding one million of the Radeon X1300 graphics processors into the market means that ATI may expect additional demand for its low-end products.

The companies indicated that the Radeon X1300-variation called RV516 is currently in production at UMC’s 300mm Fab 12A in Tainan, Taiwan. The RV516 is one of the three versions of the Radeon X1300 available, it brings 32-bit memory bus support for very low-end graphics cards, in addition to 64-bit bus and 128-bit bus options presented on two other versions.

While one million graphics chips sounds like a tremendous amount of components, in reality, it is not a very high amount of devices, still, it is a significant number. According to Jon Peddie Research estimations, 21 million desktop discrete graphics processing units (GPUs) and 5.1 million mobile GPUs were shipped in Q1 2006. The vast majority of those components are entry-level and mainstream graphics processors. It is highly likely that ATI will announce deals with computer makers, who are interested in getting entry-level graphics cards for desktop personal computers (PCs) scheduled to arrive on the market during the back-to-school (BTS) season.

ATI Radeon X1300 features two vertex processing engines and two pixel processing engines. Clock-speed and memory support depend on the particular model.

ATI is also cooperating with UMC to produce other graphics ICs using the foundry’s 90nm and 80nm process technologies, the companies said.