A report over Taiwanese media puts concerns of abilities of mainboard makers to supply enough enthusiast-class ATI-based motherboards to the market after May, as arch-rival Nvidia is reportedly cutting-down supplies of Uli-branded I/O controllers, which are used on numerous platforms featuring chipsets from ATI.

Following the acquisition of Uli in early 2006, Nvidia has accelerated the pace of shutting down the Uli chipset brand in order to discourage sales of ATI chipsets in the channel, indicated DigiTimes web-site citing sources within the industry.

While the bulk of mainboards designed for system integrators and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) use ATI's own south bridges, which are also referred as I/O controllers, quite a number of motherboards for the channel and retail market implement Uli's M1575 and M1573 chips, which are more advanced compared to in-house developed controllers.

Reducing supplies of the M1575 and M1573 chips or fully ceasing their shipments may affect sales of mainboards powered by ATI's Radeon Xpress or CrossFire Xpress chipsets, as enthusiast may not want to get platforms with relatively outdated south bridges.

Taiwanese mainboard producers forecast that only first-tier mainboard manufacturers like

Asustek Computer and Elite Group Computer Systems (ECS) can preserve ?normal?ATI-based motherboard supplies, as ?the current ATI inventory of 100 thousand I/O controller chips should provide enough supply? Second-tier producers are expected to find it difficult to sustain stable shipments of ATI-based solutions from June, according to the news-story.

Meanwhile, ATI is expected to introduce a new breed of south bridges in the middle of 2006. The family dubbed as the SB600 will not only support the latest technologies and features, but will also consist of several models targeted at different market segments.

Neither ATI, nor Nvidia commented on the news-story.