AMD today announced plans to extend its leadership position in graphics software with major enhancements to performance and compatibility for ATI Radeon graphics for consumer Linux users. These improvements are planned for subsequent releases of ATI's Catalyst software package beginning in early September. This announcement represents a significant first step in redefining the graphics landscape for Linux consumer users. Moving forward, AMD also plans to accelerate efforts to address the needs of the open source community as well.

"As client computing on Linux continues to grow so has our support and focus on delivering best-in-class performance and compatibility for our products," said Ben Bar-Haim, vice president of software, Graphics Product Group at AMD. "In the second half of 2007 we plan to deliver the most significant enhancements for ATI Radeon graphics ever for Linux and reaffirm our commitment to consumer users and the community as a whole."

With the forthcoming Catalyst 7.9 software release in September, AMD will add Linux support for the ATI Radeon HD 2000 series of graphics processors. The Radeon HD 2000 series offer a number of compelling new features for Linux users including AMD's patented unified shader architecture.

In addition to expanded GPU support, Catalyst 7.9 is being designed to offer a number of major performance improvements across the board with users seeing up to 90 per cent improvement in such popular titles as Doom 3 and Quake 4 (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=823&num=3). In Q4 2007, AMD's Catalyst software package for Linux will add support for Accelerated Indirect GLX (AIGLX). AIGLX is an enabling technology that allows Linux users to enjoy a rich visual 3D user interface that provides a more immersive end-user compute experience.