So is ATI gone forever, as a brandname at least? Apparently not, AMD Chief Technology Officer Phil Hester revealed today. He also indicated the two companies' fusion may not necessarily mean it's curtains for ATI's Intel-oriented chipsets.

Speaking in London today, Hester told Reg Hardware the ATI name will continue to be used in association with what are now AMD's discrete graphics products and its chipsets.

This makes eminent sense if only because its allows Nvidia and its new arch-rival to continue to describe each other as the 'red guys' and the 'green guys'. If AMD dropped ATI, all GPUs - well, the ones that matter - would be all green, and how would anyone tell them apart?

Separately, Hester indicated ATI would continue to be the brand for the Intel chipsets, suggesting that AMD at least wants to continue to offer such product. Whether Intel will let it do so, by withholding future bus licences, remains to be seen. ®