Interview with ATI's Richard Huddy and Kevin Strange

June 30, 2004 / by nggalai / Page 3 of 3

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TCPA, Electronic Arts, and Closing Remarks

3DCenter: ATI and Electronic Arts - many gamers feel that many if not all EA titles have far more troubles running on ATI hardware than on its competitors' parts. How tight is your collaboration with EA? Or does the problem lie differently?

Kevin: Actually what you say is not true in this case. ATI works closely with EA's teams throughout the world and we have a great track record of compatibility. Their QA group uses ATI hardware to make sure that their games run well on our hardware, and many of their major titles make great use of ATI hardware. We even have teams who have worked on site with their engineers adding special effects and working on cool techniques to make the game run faster and look better on ATI hardware.

As well as supporting EA internal development and compatibility directly with our services, we are also supporting the numerous developers who are working with EA to ensuring their programmers and compatibility labs are working closely with ATI - DICE, Lionhead, Visual Science and Argonaut to mention just a few.

3DCenter: TCPA - ATI seems a stout supporter of the TCPA program. According to our polls, graphics enthusiasts are those that worry the most about TCPA and may gauge their future purchases on whether a part is TCPA-friendly or not. Enthusiasts have a market share of about 3% here, and are often the people to talk to among their friends regarding what to buy next, which may lead to cascadingly higher 'shares' of anti-TCPA people out there. Is TCPA even an issue with graphics boards, or does ATI's support only extend to the chipset stage?

Richard: Assuming that TCPA here stands for the 'Trusted Computer Platform Alliance', then so far these initiatives haven't had much impact on the gaming platform. In future that may change, and I would guess that the next operating system from Microsoft will enhance their TC support.

I understand why many people oppose this kind of intrusion into the kind of 'free use' that people are accustomed to with their PCs, but it's also worth remembering that games developers and publishers rely on most games being un-pirated if they're to make a living. Indeed some argue that any copying of copyrighted games or music is not so different from theft - but I'm a simple 'DevRel' kind of a guy and I don't like to get involved in the big company politics that come into play here.

3DCenter: Last question - What does '7 of 5' stand for? And where's 'Fat Tony' from? Simpsons / Star Trek, or something other? ;-)

Kevin: When Richard, Dave [Horne] and I left NVIDIA we set up our own company and called it The Code Mafia. Our team was very close and felt like a family and our company plan was/is to solve developers' problems by using our connections and making developers offers (so good) they could not refuse. ;-)

Originally I suggested The Games Mafia but, then Dave suggested Code Mafia which was far cooler and a better description of what we did - helping to organize code.

We then decided it would be fun to have 'Mafia' names, I was about 20 kilos heavier that I am now, as well as a big fan of the Simpsons and Sopranos so I snapped up 'Fat Tony'. Richard is managing director hence 'The Don' and Dave never wears anything but black so was happy to be 'Mr Black'.

Richard: I chose the name tag 'Richard "7 of 5" Huddy' almost 3 years ago. The tag '7 of 5' has four meanings, which makes it pretty compact ...

1. I'm a big fan of Jerry Ryan who plays '7 of 9' in Star Trek Voyager.
2. When I used to work for NVIDIA we were sometimes thought of Borg-like, and this is a Borg-style designation.
3. There are seven letters in 'Richard' and five in 'Huddy'.
4. Last, but the one I'm most proud of, we gave out speaker evaluation forms at a conference once and one came back marking me top with 7 points when 5 was the highest allowed.

3DCenter: Thanks again for your time, Kevin and Richard. Anything else you want to add?

Richard: I'd just like to address two groups of people.

If you're a fan of ATI and own our hardware already then rest assured that we're doing everything we can to make the experience better and better - we make sure that almost every single PC game gets developed on ATI hardware and looks its best there. And we strive to raise the quality of our drivers with every new release which means you get a better, smoother more convincing gaming experience than on any other hardware.

And to those who have remained unconvinced by the last two years of leadership from ATI then I'd ask that you take a fresh look. Look beyond the simple marketing campaigns and understand that ATI is serious about giving you great lasting value, quality and performance without compromise and the best and most stable drivers in existence.

Kevin: I'd just like to say 'Hi' to all the games developers out there who know me and let them know I'm going to be a dad soon. The baby is due in January which should help avoid the rush for support for Christmas titles. ;-)

I'd also like to say thanks to ATI for continuing to match our win-win philosophy helping to drive the Games industry forward rather than trying to own it.

ATI is still a great place to work after two years and the decisions we are making are still solving developers' problems and wining us friends and business all the time. This great attitude has allowed us to gain market share on the PC and win the business of at least two of the future games consoles. With the programs and plans we are currently putting in place to solve developer problems even more efficiently I can see me being very happy at ATI for years to come. When my developers are happy I am happy - thanks for not disappointing us! ;-)

For those PC games developers in Europe who don't know me yet: get in touch and let us know what you're working on. Send an email to devrel@ati.com (mark it for my attention). You can also register for our developer program here. Registered developers will benefit from:

• Notification of new products and updates.
• Priority access to new products.
• Special discounts on currently shipping products (NTSC only).
• Priority email support for developers.
• Software support.
• Access to technical documents and information.
• Product loans for your trade show displays and development projects.

3DCenter thanks Richard, Kevin, Chris Hook, and our other contacts at ATI for their time and for making the interview possible. Also, kind regards to zeckensack, Exxtreme, Leonidas, aths, and all the other 3DCenter forum members providing questions and support in drafting this inverview.