ATI to ship DirectX 11 GPUs in 2009, more

At a press conference at the CEATEC show currently held in Japan, ATI graphics department senior vice president and general manager Rick Bergman announced the company’s products will support DirectX 11 in 2009, hinting at a new range of graphics processing units (GPUs), among other news. Along with support for the new programming interfaces, the update will bring with it more advanced OpenGL 2.x features. The AMD-owned graphics label also revealed it will use a 40nm process to make its chips and use the GDDR5 memory standard more widely, both of which should make for considerably higher performance graphics processors.

The company expects consumer applications will use their graphics cards for general purpose computing tasks, or what it calls GPGPU, specifically boosted by the arrival of DirectX 11 and Windows 7 in the near future. Apple's proposed OpenCL standard will also support the feature, which can accelerate physics, video encoding and other very math-intensive tasks without turning to the main processor.

ATI will also expand its HD efforts, as an increasing number of HDTVs are going beyond 1920x1080 resolution. Growth is expected as computing will include a higher focus on visual interfaces as well, thanks to Microsoft’s Surface-based devices, among others.

ATI also recognizes emerging stereoscopic 3D technologies, such as Philips’ recently introduced technology and holograms, and pledges advancement in what it considers to be the “ultimate visual experience.” [via Impress]

Filed under: computers, gaming, digital imaging
Other story tags: AMD, ATI