During ATI's 2006 third quarter financial results conference call this morning, ATI CEO Dave Orton revealed to analysts that despite demonstrating physics processing earlier this year, volume availability will not be for another "9 to 12 months." Orton indicated that the technology was still undergoing testing and preparation. Interestingly, ATI indicated earlier that its physics technology was already on the market and needed only driver updates.

Dave's reply was that we won't see physics in volume (i.e. hundreds of thousands of cards being used for physics) and therefore a material revenue stream from physics for 9-12 months (i.e. another 3-4 quarters) as that's when there will be some substantial volume of ATI graphics cards being used for physics purposes.

ATI GPU's that support physics acceleration are already in retail (i.e. the X1900 and X1600 series of cards for example). All that's required is a driver update that enables physics processing, and more importantly, game content which we expect around the holidays. We're very likely to see revenue from physics before 9-12 months, but as Dave said it won't be in volume, it will likely be early adopters.