ATI To Discontinue Intel Chipset Development?

The gang at HKEPC report that ATI's latest roadmaps to motherboard vendors are now missing all next generation chipsets for the Intel platform and have the RC610 chipset as the last product in development. This means that RD700, RS700 and RC710 are no longer being developed with those teams likely now focusing their attention on the AMD platform. Despite several claims assuring the industry there would be no conflict on the Intel platform, motherboard vendors have painful memories of the NVIDIA/ULI acquisition where they were left without any supply of Southbridge chips. As a result, the industry trend seems to have vendors creating fewer ATI/Intel based motherboard sku's in an attempt to avoid any allocation issues. Once ATI's license to manufacture chipsets for the Intel platform expires or the FSB cap of 1066MHz is exceeded, we will have concrete confirmation that ATI's time on the Intel platform is up as it is highly unlikely Intel would ever renew the agreement.