Nvidia's Senior VP of Investor Relations and Communications Michael Hara claims the outfit is not worried about ATI's DirectX 11 lead and that it doesn't matter in the big scheme of things. At the Barclays Capitol Global Technology Conference in San Francisco last week, Hara argued ATI's lead won't hurt Nvidia and its plans.

"To us, being out of sync with the API for a couple of months isn't as important as what we're trying to do in the big scheme of things for the next four or five years," said Hara. "We're just around the corner from preparing our next GeForce and the experience of what you'll see in 3D, what you'll feel in physics, and the improvements you get in graphics will be obvious to the market."

Hara admits DirectX 11 marks the start of a new age in graphics, as it offers some new features, support for multi-core processors and some GPGPU features. Although we're pretty sure Nvidia would be singing an entirely different tune if it was in the lead, Hara is right about one thing. ATI's lead doesn't mean much simply due to fact that ATI isn't shipping nearly enough DirectX 11 GPUs to meet demand.

Nvidia's Fermi will probably appear in late Q1, but ATI should resolve its Evergreen shortage issues much sooner. Hara promises Fermi will be worth the wait and for Nvidia's sake we hope he is right.

More here.