Delays: The Curse of Acquisitions

The Windows Vista intro has come and gone, and in spite of my past prediction to the contrary, AMD's graphics division (the group formerly known as ATI Technologies) hasn't yet unveiled a DirectX 10-supportive GPU. Come to think of it, though, maybe my prior prognostication wasn't that far off; I did point out that the same Xbox-induced distraction that previously hobbled Nvidia, coupled with the added complication of the AMD acquisition, had likely stalled next-generation product rollouts beyond originally-planned timeframes.

But I didn't suspect the pushout would be this significant; Engadget speculates on where the R600 is (or, perhaps more accurately, isn't) and when the availability situation might improve for AMD. Here's more on the ATI R600 schedule pushout from ExtremeTech. Meanwhile, Nvidia has just released the third product spin of the GeForce 8800 architecture.

Acquisition-induced chedule pushouts, of course and alas, aren't uniquely an AMD issue; my Xbox 360, for example, hasn't been able to access the multimedia content housed on my Infrant ReadyNAS ever since last November's Dashboard Update, and the required v4.2 of TwonkyVision's UPnP software is stuck in a seemingly perpetual beta morass. Company officials, in the user forum, admit that distractions induced by the company's October purchase by PacketVideo are fundamentally to blame for the delay.