Why did AMD purchase graphics card maker ATI last year?
Ruiz: The future of computing is going to be driven by a number of things in technology. One of them is visualization. When 32-bit computing was introduced [more than] 10 years ago, the industry moved from command-driven computing to icon-driven. … I think the next evolution, which is 64-bit computing, is going to enable visualization where you can see the impact computing has in a more productive way. One of the reasons we bought ATI is that it has a very strong graphics technology that allows us to bring visualization to computing that is very powerful. One of the early indications of the possibility is going to be the implementation of the Vista [operating system] from a Microsoft perspective. Visualization technology actually is going to be pervasive, from handheld devices such as phones all the way to supercomputing. And the capability ATI has actually starts with very small handheld devices. A lot of the high-end PDAs [personal digital assistants] you see on the market today ha
