Death for ULi?
NVIDA seems to have buried the Voodoo brand after its acquisition of 3DFX and looks set to be doing the same to the ULI brand. At least that's what HEXUS has been told by two of NVIDIA's 'nForce chipset' customers.While we're not sure that NVIDIA'S actions here are such a big surprise, perhaps we're missing something? Both of these mainboard makers seem to have thought the info sufficiently newsworthy for us to share it with you.
Apparently these and other Taiwanese mainboard makers have been told by NVIDIA that while it (NVIDIA) is claiming to “continue to support the current line of (ULI) chips, soon ULI will be 'fully integrated' within NVIDIA”.
According to these customers, all that NVIDIA wanted from its purchase of ULI was the “design house and engineers”, and hence the intention to dump the ULI brand name - perhaps thought to be too low rent for the marketing-led, Santa-Clara-based NVIDIA?
However, we wonder whether ULI had specific activities or, more importantly, government-related connections in China on which NVIDIA placed more value?
ATi Technologies recently launched its RADEON XPRESS 3200 (RD580) core logic and in doing so, showcased it on an ASUSTeK A8R32-MVP mainboard, which featured a ULI 'Southbridge'...