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ATI’s 2004 Fast14 License: What the Intrinsity Deal Did—and Didn’t Reveal

ATI’s Fast14 agreement covered chip-design technology, tools, and services. Later reporting confirmed ATI design work, but did not identify a shipping product.
From TheFinanceBase Team2 min to read
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ATI’s February 2004 agreement with Intrinsity licensed chip-design technology and services for possible use in future consumer products; it was not an announcement of a new ATI graphics chip. A 2006 report confirmed completed ATI design work using Fast14, but neither report identifies a specific product that shipped with it.

What ATI licensed from Intrinsity

ATI Technologies and Intrinsity announced the agreement on February 5, 2004. The deal covered Intrinsity’s Fast14 technology, design services, electronic design automation (EDA) tools, and other intellectual property needed to implement dynamic logic, according to EE Times’ contemporaneous report.

Fast14 was a chip-design approach and toolset, not a retail processor or graphics card. A 2001 overview from Berkeley Design Technology describes techniques including a four-phase overlapping clock scheme, 1-of-N dynamic logic, routing intended to reduce coupling noise, and tools to automate circuit creation.

What the “up to four times” claim meant

ATI engineering vice president Bob Feldstein said the company believed Fast14 could deliver “up to four times the performance per silicon dollar when compared with standard design approaches,” as reported by EE Times on February 6, 2004. This was an attributed company claim about performance relative to silicon cost—not an independent benchmark, a claim of four times the clock speed, or a specification for a named ATI product.

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Was Fast14 used in an ATI product?

The 2004 announcement said Fast14 was licensed for future consumer products but did not name a product or market. In 2006, EE Times reported that Intrinsity had completed an ATI design-services deal using Fast14. That later report supports saying Fast14 was used in ATI design work; it does not establish which chip or product incorporated it, how extensively it was used, or what benefit a shipped product received.

The available reports therefore do not establish that a particular ATI GPU, console, or other consumer product used Fast14. Intrinsity’s FastMath processor, discussed separately in the 2004 coverage, should not be confused with ATI’s licensed design work.

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Why dynamic logic involved tradeoffs

Dynamic logic can offer speed advantages over static logic when implemented effectively, but it can also consume more power and requires careful design. The Fast14 descriptions include clocking and routing techniques, as well as EDA tools and design services, relevant to implementation. The cited sources provide no controlled comparison of Fast14 against other approaches for performance, power, silicon cost, or implementation complexity.

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What the reports establish—and leave open

  • Established: ATI and Intrinsity announced a Fast14 license on February 5, 2004, covering design services, EDA tools, and related intellectual property.
  • Established: A 2006 EE Times report says Intrinsity completed ATI design work using Fast14.
  • Not established: The identity of a resulting ATI product, whether it shipped, how widely Fast14 was used, or a measured product-level performance gain.

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