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News AMD ditches Fusion branding

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by brumgrunt, 19 Jan 2012.

  1. XXAOSICXX

    XXAOSICXX Minimodder

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    Can't help but notice that some people here really are short sighted and/or know very little about business.

    So the new architecture sucks does it? Sure...perhaps it does! In fact, let us say it definitely does. Putting yourself in the shoes of an AMD exec would you:

    a) Write off billions in R&D costs because it hasn't taken to market the way you'd hoped

    or

    b) Spend a minute fraction of the R&D costs on a "marketing shuffle" in an attempt to recover just some of those costs so that you CAN "get back into the lab and get us some decent processors".

    ...and I don't think that "Heterogeneous Systems Architecture" will mean a thing to "joe public", but then, they'll sell it has "HSA" which will mean just as much/as little to your average punter as "Hyper Threading" (HT), "Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line" (ADSL), "Serial Advanced Technology Attachment" (SATA) and so on and so on, and since the article states "the company clearly feels it's time to bring the technology to a new audience under a more professional brand identity" I think we can safely assume they're going to be marketing it at OEMs, system builders, etc and not your average sucker in PC World.
     
  2. CowBlazed

    CowBlazed What's a Dremel?

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    I don't think people realize how much of a success fusion has been for AMD, the Bobcat APUs are in laptops and stores everywhere, and Llano mobiles, while short in supply, kill anything near the same price range in gaming by a long shot. So these are also pretty popular.

    Desktop space you might count them out unless your on a budget, but mobile AMD has it going on.

    Intel mobile CPUs cost a bundle and give you more then you need, where as their graphics are sub par in every way.
     
  3. lysaer

    lysaer Suck my unit! Kirk lazarus (2008)

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    I don't confess to know all the power to price points for Intel and AMD in the laptop market. But I would think if someone is buying a laptop for gaming, they would opt for a independent GPU anyways.

    Sent from my HTC Sensation XE with Beats Audio Z715e using Tapatalk
     
  4. Madness_3d

    Madness_3d Bit-Tech/Asus OC Winner

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    looks like servers are where it's at for AMD at the mo
     
  5. improprietary

    improprietary FT03 is a bitch to watercool

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    Heterogeneous? Thats an insult for the gay modding community!
    just making bullets here :3
     
  6. fluxtatic

    fluxtatic What's a Dremel?

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    What I said, I say as someone who's only used AMD for many, many years. The Llano and Brazos are pretty kick-ass, but they're based on the Phenom II arch. BD, which was supposed to crush Sandy Bridge in the consumer and server markets, will not. I dearly hope that they are 5 years ahead of everyone else and that once software catches up, I can finally have the chance to rub it in the faces of Intel fanboys.

    In the meantime, the Fusion branding would have been fine. This 'heterogeneous systems architecture' sounds clumsy, and I think it may hurt them worse in that they're yanking the Fusion branding so quickly. I'd say AMD is being a bit short-sighted themselves, in that now it appears they're panicking. Or that, under pressure, they maybe pushed BD out the door before it was really ready, as it had already been delayed several times. Because they wouldn't shut up about how it would be greatest thing ever, they had to deliver, only to disappoint. They should have done a die shrink on the Stars arch and kept BD in the lab until they could at least match what their previous (8 year old) arch could do across the board. I got an AM3+ board when my old board died, figuring at least I'd be ready once BD finally dropped (it was already well late by that point.) Imagine my disappointment when I found out there was no compelling reason to replace my PII X3 - not in performance, and not enough in performance-per-watt.

    I went to spec a server just the other day, and what do I find? For my use, AMD isn't the best there, either. In some highly-specialized use cases, yes. But for most average server applications, Intel still has them beat.

    I know enough about business to know that what AMD is doing now could blow up in their faces. They may not be scrambling, but it doesn't matter - the appearance of scrambling is damaging enough.
     
  7. ssj12

    ssj12 Minimodder

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    dear god this sounds bloody horrid
     
  8. dyzophoria

    dyzophoria Minimodder

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    FUSION is way better than heterogenous, just like ATI is way better than using AMD on their videocards, just saying
     
  9. ewanqbl

    ewanqbl What's a Dremel?

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    I think when you have more than one brand under the same roof, you just lose more money than you normally should. I guess this move will only make AMD reduce costs on marketing and, maybe, invest more in R&D. I mean, let's be serious, they may have innovative designs, but the implementation is way off. They APU is nice, but other designs simply do not come close to expectations.

    Let's hope for the best! In some countries, name changing new born babies that are deathly sick is a common practice to fool death and let them live. Anthropology was a great class. Maybe it will work for AMD, too!
     
  10. l3v1ck

    l3v1ck Fueling the world, one oil well at a time.

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    Not a rebranding exercise my arse! Using a bigger word doesn't make it better. There was nothing wrong with Fusion as a brand name. In fact it rolls off the tounge much more easily. They could easily have made the hardware changes without destroying the brand.

    Sent from Bit-Tech Android app
     
  11. Jhodas

    Jhodas Theorist

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    This smacks of a company in quite a lot of disarray. If their branding is changing this quickly, you can quite safely assume that this has been happening with the RnD too, so they'll have probably pushed the boffins in two directions at once. Result: phail.

    I'm a massive AMD fanboy and was holding out for bulldozer, but all the top level reshuffling made me vary nervous.
     
  12. technogiant

    technogiant What's a Dremel?

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    It's not all bad for AMD, there are reports that "trinity" is going to be better than expected both in terms of the cpu and gpu portions.

    On the negative side however over at Semiaccurate who are traditionally AMD centric there is an article stating that information received ;-) shows that Kepler even in the mid range GK104 version is going to beat the AMD 7000 series on "all fronts".

    So AMD really have to utilize their unique position of having fair/good performance on both cpu and gpu fronts.

    Trouble is they can't do that just by giving heterogeneous computing a new name....they MUST HAVE NEW SOFTWARE SUPPORT AS WELL!!
     
    Last edited: 20 Jan 2012
  13. knutjb

    knutjb What's a Dremel?

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    The end user they are going for isn't gaming, primarily uses programs that are not that demanding, need multiple monitor support, and low power consumption. These processors do that well. For these customers they will likely expand graphics capabilities as well as other end user specific needs. Most of these aren't a big deal in the gaming world but business tends to buy bulk and are a very important market. With consumers moving to mobile devices of varying types business is a great place to cater to. Offices find big productivity gains with 2-3 and sometimes 4 monitors per worker, if AMD will do this from say the A series they will open up a nice market.
     
  14. CowBlazed

    CowBlazed What's a Dremel?

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    As I said, Llano APU kills anything in the even remote price range as far as a gaming notebook goes ($300-500).

    Sure you can get a dedicated GPU, if you want to pay closer to $1000. Otherwise, you're only choice is integrated graphics or low end dedicated, all of which Llano completely destroys price and performance wise.
     
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