The Inquirer reports that ATI's upcoming R600 graphics core has taped out, meaning it has made it off the drawing board and into manufacturing. The R600 is ATI's next-generation graphics processor, and it is expected to implement a unified shader architecture as well as support for DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0. ATI's CEO Dave Orton also stated in March that R600 chips would be built with 80 nm and 65 nm process technologies for the high-end and low-end, respectively. Early R600 samples are reported to "work well," and The Inq believes everything is on schedule. No final date is known for when R600-powered graphics cards will appear on store shelves, but a launch date between October and December is considered possible. It's gonna be an interesting fall!