One of my occasional haunts in Santa Clara sure serves up some fine fayre, but this time I got one bean more in my groceries than the 520 i’ve come to love…

Byrne's Market & Deli, 690 River Oaks Pkwy, San Jose, CA 95134, (408) 428-0220 is only a few miles from the location of ATi Technologies’ research establishment in Santa Clara.

It’s a small grocery store which always seems to have a tasty selection of fresh produce including dairy and other groceries; however at lunch times the deli and coffee bar can often get real busy, and sometimes with hungry employees from a certain nearby business….

Knowing this, whenever I’m in the area, I pop in for a lovely latte and to see who’s willing to be spilling...

Oddly no-one I recognised was about, but I did overhear two animated young engineer types discuss a bean that I thought you’d like – the codename of ATi’s forthcoming successor to its just released RADEON X1800 XT (R520) - the 90nm R580 is called ‘Rodin’.

Named, we think, after the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), whose works included ‘The Thinker’ and the exquisitely risqué ‘The Kiss’.

With memory rumoured to be like Fudo, what kind of a thinker will ATi R580 be?...