PCI Express™ will dominate new PCs

2004 will mark the most significant update to PC architecture in the past decade. This is the year when the new PCI Express® architecture will arrive on the market to replace the AGP and PCI standards. Already one application - HDTV video editing - requires PCI Express, and there will certainly be others in the near future, including PC gaming .

ATI is at the forefront of this wave of innovation by being the first graphics provider to demonstrate a live-running PCI Express graphics solution.

ATI is supplying true PCI Express cards

ATI’s videoprocessors have a native, or “true” PCI Express interface. They can communicate directly with the PCI Express bus at PCI Express speeds.

Multiple Benefits of ATI’s True PCI Express Solution

ATI’s PCI Express design provides more than double the bandwidth of AGP solutions. Full bandwidth is available in both upstream and downstream directions simultaneously, whereas AGP is only capable of unidirectional bandwidth.

• Better reliability
  There are fewer failure points with native one-chip ATI PCI Express due to the smaller number of physical connections, which lowers the time delay between when data is requested and when it is delivered. This also translates into more robust error correction and recovery.
  
• Better power management
  The serial bus with the reduced pin structure of the ATI native PCI Express architecture reduces the number of signals required, supporting lower power consumption and PCI Express's low-power idle states.
  Notebook users will find this feature of particular importance.

ATI PCI Express Demonstration
ATI is being joined by Intel® and Pinnacle® Systems to demonstrate High Definition (HD) video editing on a PC at Intel Developer’s Forum in San Francisco the week of February 17th, 2004.
Made possible by PCI Express’s high speed data transfers, the demonstration has to use the industry’s only true PCI Express visual processing unit (GPU). ATI’s PCI Express GPU, in conjunction with the advanced real time HD engine being developed by Pinnacle, takes advantage of the new read and write capabilities offered by PCI Express.

The future is here, stay tuned to see it first with ATI.

PCI Express Demo White Paper (PDF)