Inside ATI & NVIDIA: How they make frames fly

Ever since we started our Inside series the two companies we've received the most requests for have been ATI and NVIDIA. After touring Intel's research labs in Oregon and visiting VIA in Taiwan, we felt it was time to visit the two kings of graphics - ATI and NVIDIA.

We combined these two companies into one article for one reason in particular - our tours were complementary. ATI imposed very strict restrictions on photographs during our visit to their offices in Thornhill, Ontario; we saw a lot of interesting things at ATI's offices (including the foundation for their fountain of fire in the lobby of their main building) but we weren't able to take pictures of most of them. On the other hand, ATI sat us down with one of their chip architects and we were able to get a wealth of information about how their GPUs were made.

NVIDIA wasn't able to set us up with any engineers for an extended period of time (although lunch with Chief Scientist, David Kirk is always informative) but they were much more lax on the picture front so we were able to bring you more of the behind the scenes from NVIDIA.

The combination of the two visits provided us with enough material to put together this piece, so without further ado let's take you inside ATI and NVIDIA.