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“Without doubt, AMD Fusion is a game changer”
While Byrne was not able to comment on specific market share data, he did say “The flexibility of the AMD Fusion APU certainly enables us to play outside of our core markets, moving into the netbook and tablet market, which will undoubtedly provide exciting opportunities for AMD”.
That draws a natural comparison to the way the EeePC changed hearts and minds for Asus. We put this to Byrne, “The beauty of AMD's Fusion APU is that it will enable the creation of new PCs in various form factors. We’ve specifically designed the APU to deliver high levels of performance at low and very low power levels. The integration of CPU and GPU enables an improved user experience”.
“Without a doubt, AMD Fusion is our game-changer, not just for AMD but for the industry as a whole”, said Byrne. “AMD Fusion is changing the game for our ODM partners as well for the system builders”.
When it comes to playing games full-speed on a huge screen, the graphics engine on a PC comes into its own. That said, in low-power applications it's also important to have as much graphics-grunt as possible under the bonnet. When it comes to applications like HD video, a graphics processor can deliver better performance with a lower power draw.
How useful does Byrne think the Fusion APU will be for ultra-portable solutions?
“As we know, tablets are a great innovation for accessing and viewing digital content. AMD Fusion clearly possesses all the core technology to power an unrivalled tablet or slate experience”, said Byrne.
So how close are these solutions?
He replied, “Some OEMs already have announced plans to offer tablet designs based on our low power APUs giving AMD an early presence in this market. In parallel to the growth of the market for tablet-type devices, AMD will drive its APU roadmap to offer designs increasingly better suited to these form factors, while still delivering that big AMD Fusion experience starting in 2012.
The message here seems to be ‘some vendors already have early designs under way, but expect to see some serious changes next year'. Given how many top ATI people ended up at Apple, KitGuru has to wonder about the possibility of an iPad 3 driven by an AMD Fusion chip in the future.
