ATI's R600 to be the biggest graphic chip ever?

[Toss3]

Don't know if you've seen this already:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31862

WE LEARNED that ATI's upcoming R600, its next-generation high-end chip, might end up as the biggest graphics chip of all time.

It won’t be cold either. Indeed, it might be the hottest chip ever, but we were informed that it might be the fastest chip as well.

[skoprowski]

That's all ATI needs- another hot chip that needs a loud blower to cool it :rolleyes:

[Superfly]

ROFL, ATI are always good for a laugh.

[shabby]

Just in time for winter to warm up the house, thank you ati ;)

[Sazar]

but we were informed that it might be the fastest chip as well.

I love teh inq's ability to state things like this :cool:

Let's make 50 different statements and then we'll claim to be right all along but heck, lets state the most obvious thing in there as well just to be sure. :D

[sandeep]

Just in time for winter to warm up the house, thank you ati ;)
and then RMA in summer.....:o

[msxyz]

Back in the early '90s, some monster dies have been crancked up by the factory boys. I recall having seen a couple of 300+ mm2 chips; the transistor density was nowhere near todays but they were impressive nevertheless.

Today a 200mm2 chip is considered huge. I wonder if The Inq refers to the die size or transistor count or both. And I don't know if this info might be considered credible at all.

If the R600 shares the same architecture with Xenos, it should have a rather efficient design (Xenos 48 unified pipelines take only 75M transistors; on the die there are an additional 16 pipelines disabled for redundancy. The rest is cache, buffers, etc...)