SIGGRAPH (BOOTH# 2936), SAN DIEGO, CA/ Munich, Germany, July 29, 2003 - ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX: ATY, NASDAQ: ATYT) is demonstrating hardware accelerated rendering using three of the industry's leading workstation applications at SIGGRAPH. With FireGL, users can experience the seamless integration of hardware accelerated rendering into their favorite application and see how it can accelerate the production pipeline.



ATI has worked closely with Alias, Discreet and SoftImage, leading application vendors for the digital content creation (DCC) community, to seamlessly integrate hardware accelerated rendering into their applications. This integration allows users to view real-time cinematic previews within the application using OpenGL Shading Language and Microsoft's DirectX9 HLSL. Real-time previewing and hardware accelerated rendering will slash the amount of time users will have to wait for rendering to be completed in a traditional software renderer. This will allow them to revise their models and affects on the fly, speeding up their production pipeline.



"Collaborating with leading application vendors, using industry standard APIs, is the surest way to advance the industry," said Dinesh Sharma, Director, Workstation, ATI Technologies Inc. "Software and hardware innovations need to move forward in lock-step to best benefit the end-user. This is a perfect example of how industry partnership can lead to real, tangible benefits for our customers."



"Interactively creating GLSlang from arbitrary shader networks that can be previewed and adjusted in real-time is a breakthrough for our Maya 5 customers," said Shai Hinitz, Product Manager for Maya, Alias. "Having the ability to process shaders and procedurals on board the graphics card is the next logical step in hardware rendering. ATI's support for the OpenGL Shading Language running on its FireGL accelerators, allows our customers to use an industry standard interface to preview real-time cinematic quality imagery from within Maya 5.0."



"The potential to view cinematic-quality materials in real-time within the Discreet 3ds max 6 interactive viewport will be a tremendous advance in production efficiency," said Jeff Yates, Director of 3D Software Development for Discreet. "Microsoft DirectX 9 High-level Shader Language (HLSL) is a core component of 3ds max 6 that takes advantage of ATI's FireGL graphics accelerators, illustrating the tight link between hardware and software vendors which is essential to the delivery of real-time rendering to our customer base."



"ATI's commitment to drive real-time rendering to new heights is exemplified by their focus on delivering their latest advancements in VPU hardware, combined with industry standard interfaces and tight integration within the SOFTIMAGE|XSI software," said Marc Stevens, Director of Research and Development for Softimage. "SOFTIMAGE|XSI v 3.5 combined with FireGL accelerators allows for shader development from within the content creation application using OpenGL Shading Language or Microsoft HLSL. This helps broaden the opportunities where real-time cinematic previewing can be beneficial to the production process."



For more information on hardware accelerated rendering, please visit http://www.ati.com/FireGL. To see the applications in action, visit ATI's booth (#2936) at SIGGRAPH.



Company Background
ATI Technologies Inc. is a world leader in the design and manufacture of innovative 3D graphics and digital media silicon solutions. An industry pioneer since 1985, ATI is the world's foremost visual processor unit (VPU) provider and is dedicated to deliver leading-edge performance solutions for the full range of PC and Mac desktop and notebook platforms, workstation, set-top and digital television, game console and handheld markets. With 2001 revenues in excess of US $1 billion, ATI has more than 1,900 employees in the Americas, Europe and Asia. ATI common shares trade on NASDAQ (ATYT) and the Toronto Stock Exchange (ATY).