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AMD says it's "ignoring" netbooks, will focus on ultraportables
It seemed earlier this week that AMD's new Conesus chips would take on Intel's dominant Atom platform in the netbook market, but it sounds like that was just wishful thinking -- according to CEO Dirk Meyer, the chipmaker is "ignoring the netbook platform" in favor machines "above that form factor." AMD says that it's seeing high return rates on netbooks, a phenomenon it's chalking up to an unsatisfactory user experience on smaller machines. Of course, that doesn't quite jive with the sales numbers being posted by Acer, ASUS, and HP -- and although return rates are indeed higher for Linux machines than for XP, we're puzzled as to why AMD cares about anything other than raw chip sales to OEMs, since we were under the impression that that's how AMD makes money. Of course, really smart companies don't just sell what people want, they convince people to want what they sell, and that seems to be AMD's tactic: it says that the higher-powered, dual-core Conesus with ATI RS780M graphics will deliver a full-featured user experience that more people will spring for, even if it's in a slightly larger package. We'll see if this strategy plays in the market -- while we'd love to see a machine like the Inspiron Mini 12 with some real horsepower in it, it's hard to argue with a $280 Atom-based Eee.
AMD announces Conesus netbook platform, ATI Stream brand, Fusion processor delay
We already got word of AMD's new 45nm Shanghai Opterons this morning, but it looks like that was only just the beginning of a deluge of news out of the slightly troubled company today, which includes the expected announcement of its netbook platform, the introduction of its new ATI Stream brand, and word of a delay to its much-vaunted Fusion platform. On the netbook front, AMD is hoping that its "Conesus" processor will prove to be a formidable competitor to Intel's Atom, with it apparently existing only in a 45nm, dual-core version that includes 1MB of cache and support for DDR2 RAM. Look for it to roll out in the first half of 2009. Coming ahead of that is AMD's new ATI Stream brand, which encompasses a number of the company's different stream and GPU computing initiatives and attempts to make them more attractive to both consumer and enterprise markets. To that end, AMD will be adding Stream support to its next Catalyst update (due in December), which will apparently let folks easily run stream applications that make use of your graphics card's GPU for some added computing power. It's not all high-fives around AMD, however, as the company has also let out word that its Fusion platform based around the dual CPU / GPU "Shrike" processor will be delayed until sometime in 2011, a full year later than originally planned. As if that wasn't enough, it's also shaken up the rest of its processor roadmap a bit, although it's entirely possible that it'll fluctuate a bit further before things really settle down. Hit up the links below to break all that down piece by piece.Read - Extreme Tech, "AMD Answers Atom with 'Conesus,' Roadmap Update"Read - PC Perspective, "ATI Stream Computing: From the desktop to the datacenter"Read - HotHardware, "AMD ATI Stream Computing Update"Read - TG Daily, "AMD delays Fusion processor to 2011"
