Plans laid by Canadian firm ATI could cheat Via and SIS of some motherboard customers, according to sources here in Munich.
Some boards will ship this week from FIC – and as like Via it"s a subsidiary of giant Taiwanese conglomerate Formosa Plastics, it"s all grist to the holding company"s mill.
But others apart from FIC are readying their own boards, ATI executives have told us.
FIC, apparently, has exclusive right to distribute ATI IGP 320 boards for at least a few weeks from now and after that the others will pursue their chunk of the profit pie using boards with their chipsets.
As first announced ATI Radeon IGP boards for Athlons and P4 later will use VIA or ALI Southbridge since it"s "hard to build a chipset and especially a south bridge" as we heard last September from VIA executives.
This is a tale that Nvidia likes to tattle, too.