DVI, HDCP and R1K AIW
Are ATI going to push AIBs to make all DVI ports on R1K hardware to be dual-link, given that the AIB can still connect a single-link physical port? Isn't it reasonable for ATI to force their partners to spec that across the board, given the claims made for the dual dual-link ability of the hardware?We are a nice company to work with! We don’t force our partners to do anything, the market does. All of the Radeon X1Ks are capable of at least 1 Dual Link DVI port but the only standard SKUs with 2 Dual Link DVI ports are the R520 family. There is no additional cost to having a dual link versus a single link at the PCB level but what we are finding is that customers want 1 VGA and 1 Dual Link DVI for the RV530 and RV515 class of products. So the PCB configuration that we are seeing most with our partners is 1 VGA and 1 Dual Link DVI. If an OEM customer or our partners want 2 Dual Links on something like the RV530 class (without using an external transmitter), we will certainly work with them. It should be noted that even our RV515 class of products have much better display capabilities than competitive high-end solutions.
Is HDCP in the current driver and working, so you've got content protection out of the box?
We have HDCP working great today but we are rolling it out for OEMs SKUs first. As you may know, we have developed HDCP solutions for the CE market where we have shipped millions of units. By leveraging our CE technologies, we can assure our OEM and retail customers that they will be getting a reliable and tested HDCP solution. We have not finalized our retail HDCP plans yet but we would be able to roll that out fairly quickly should the market want this technology. I predict that it will be fairly common on graphics cards by mid next year.
Any hints on the future of the AIW, now that all new Radeons have such rich multimedia and video ability built right in to the chip? What can we expect from the first R1K AIW?
Hehehehe…..no comment other than we will not launch or discuss a product until we are ready to ship. I have no worries that the fat man climbing down the chimney will have a bunch of new AIWs (even for the naughty Europeans)
