Press Release - 2003

MARKHAM, ON – Delivering a powerful combination of innovative technologies and revolutionary performance levels to the mobile graphics space, ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX:ATY, NASDAQ:ATYT) unveiled the Mobility™ Radeon® 9600 family of mobile visual processors today at a worldwide launch event at CeBIT.

The Mobility Radeon 9600 will be the first mobile graphics processor to ship with hardware support for the richest Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 feature set and version 2.0 programmable pixel and vertex shaders, which are required for dramatic, true-to-life cinematic special effects.

Using an extraordinarily efficient 3D core delivering 12 pixel shader operations per clock cycle, Mobility Radeon 9600 easily outperforms the competitor’s fastest mobile graphics chips, and astonishingly, delivers up to 50% more performance than the fastest competing desktop graphics processors in key benchmarks, including the industry-standard 3DMark 2003 Pixel Shader 2.0 test.

“The Mobility Radeon 9600 family is so far ahead of the curve that for the first time, we see mobile graphics processors that deliver cinematic imagery, performance and features superior to the competitor’s highest-end desktop products,” said Phil Eisler, Vice President and General Manager, Mobile and Integrated Business Unit, ATI Technologies Inc. “With the launch of the Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro family, ATI is continuing to build a commanding lead in both the desktop and mobile spaces, and has again delivered world-class visual processors to the market.”

The Mobility Radeon 9600 family for the first time provides OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) with the ability to design notebooks with user-upgradeable graphics. Its unique, flexible architecture implements full pin and driver compatibility across multiple product generations, which dramatically simplifies design and lowers costs.

Mobility Radeon 9600 is a multimedia powerhouse with comprehensive hardware acceleration for encode, decode and de-blocking of MPEG-2 and streaming video formats, and is the overwhelming choice of OEMs for a new breed of portable entertainment notebooks. Mobility Radeon 9600 is the first and only mobile graphics chip to integrate an HDTV encoder, enabling component output to wide-screen HDTVs.

Mobility Radeon 9600 is also the first and only mobile visual processor to support GDDR2-M memory, which delivers DDR-2 memory speeds while significantly extending battery life through innovative power saving technology. The specification for GDDR2-M memory technology was developed by a team of ATI engineers in conjunction with tier-one memory vendors. Mobility Radeon 9600 gives OEMs the choice of using either discrete memory, or one of three variants that offer up to 128 MB of memory integrated onto the chip package, another industry first.

Mobility Radeon 9600 extends ATI’s leadership in notebook graphics power management, giving users both the longest battery life and highest performance. Manufactured using the leading-edge 0.13 micron TSMC manufacturing process, Mobility Radeon 9600 supports a low 1.0V core voltage, with power consumption as low as 0.5W in idle condition. Active power is at the same level as the previous generation, even though performance and features have increased dramatically.

The impressive list of new features found in the Mobility Radeon 9600 includes:

• ATI’s SmartShader™ 2.0 technology, which allows users to experience complex, movie-quality effects in next-generation 3D games and applications; Uniquely, ATI offers full-precision floating point color, coupled with full performance, at all times;
• Overdrive™, the world’s first thermally-controlled over-clocking system that uses an on-chip thermal sensor to scale engine speeds based on the notebook thermal environment, giving improved gaming performance; ..3
• HyperM™, a matrix of memory bandwidth optimizing technologies that includes support for GDDR-2M memory, which offers users improved graphics performance and longer battery life, and the industry’s best lossless z-compression and color compression technology for better visual quality and performance;
• SmoothVision™ 2.1; the best anti-aliasing ever in a mobile GPU, utilizing 6 unique texture samples per pixel and ATI patented gamma correction, as well as 16X anisotropic filtering. SmoothVision 2.1 enhances image quality by removing jagged edges and bringing out fine texture detail, without compromising performance;
• PowerPlay™ 4.0, a significantly enhanced version of ATI’s industry-leading power management technology which extends battery life in all applications, by dynamically adjusting clock speeds and other settings based on user activity; and
• Support for AGP8X.

ATI is continuing to rapidly introduce revolutionary new architectures and moving high-end technologies into the mobile market at a fast pace. In addition to shipping both a standard and a feature and performance enhanced ‘PRO’ variant of the Mobility Radeon 9600, ATI will also begin shipping the Mobility Radeon 9200 mobile visual processor, which offers improved performance over the award-winning Mobility Radeon 9000, and includes support for AGP 8X.

Notebooks powered by the Mobility Radeon 9600 family will ship in notebooks this spring. Launch partners include Actebis, Alienware, Asus, Clevo, ECS, FIC, Fujitsu-Siemens, Gericom, HP, Medion, Media Markt, Mitac, NEC, Uniwill, and Voodoo PC.

About the Company
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 processing unit (GPU) 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).

Contact Information

For media or industry analyst support, visit our Web site at http://www.ati.com

For Information:
Chris Hook, Public Relations Manager, Mobile and Integrated Business Unit, at (905) 882-2600, Ext. 8477 or chook@ati.com

Other ATI Contacts:
Derek Baker, Counsellor, BenchMark Porter Novelli, at (416) 422-5178 or dbaker@bmporternovelli.com

For investor relations support, please contact:
Janet Craig, Director, Investor Relations, ATI Technologies Inc., at (905) 882-2600, Ext. 2631 or jcraig@ati.com