Isnin, 19 April 2010

It is already well known that AMD has their own bechmark in high end computing product, especially for games and graphical works ( though I think Apple got extra mark on the second). However, they should not just ignore the huge desire from middle and lower rank users, which could contribute narrowing the gap between its competitor, Mr. Intel.

As I always said, AMD should go after the gaping hole between netbooks and thin-and-lights by releasing a low-power platform with solid graphics abilities, and it looks like the company’s finally coming around — AMD’s John Taylor just told us that the chipmaker will be releasing a netbook-class Fusion CPU / GPU hybrid codenamed “Ontario” with integrated DX11 graphics sometime next year. If Ontario sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve seen it leaked in the past — it’s a part of the “Brazos” platform built around the low-power Bobcat core. Of course, AMD has been promising Fusion chips of all stripes for years now without a single shipping part, so saying that a Fusion chip will get it into the netbook game in 2011 is mildly amusing — while AMD’s definitely turned things around, it’s still incredibly late to the low-end party, and Intel’s solidly beaten it to the hybrid CPU / GPU punch with the Core 2010 and Pine Trail Atom chips. Add in the fact that NVIDIA’s Optimus-based Ion 2 chipset seemingly offers the extended battery life of Atom with the performance of a discrete GPU, and we’d say the market niche Ontario is designed to fill may not actually be so niche when it finally arrives. We’ll see what happens — a year is a long, long time.