NVIDIA Pressures ATI
DigiTimes reports this morning that NVIDIA has been accelerating the pace of shutting down ULI's chipset business in an effort to put pressure on rival ATI. With the vast majority of motherboards designed around ATI's chipsets using a ULI southbridge, the lack of inventory for the ULI part would certainly cause motherboard vendors to shy away from ATI-based platform designs. Apparently, both the ULI 1575 and 1573 chipsets are in severe shortages so it appears NVIDIA's supposed plan is working quite well.
Although ATI is pushing to beef up its southbridge product offerings and development, Nvidia's anticipated termination of sales of its ULi Electronics southbridge have prompted Taiwan motherboard makers to worry about ATI-based motherboard platforms from May, according to industry players.
