AMD May Introduce Ultrabook Alternative Next Month
There's a good chance we'll see an ultrathin form factor notebook supplied by AMD next month during CES 2012.
Despite earlier talk about not competing directly with Intel starting 2012, AMD is reportedly going after its rival anyway with the possible introduction of its own "ultra-thin" form factor, a super-thin MacBook Air and ultrabook clone that uses AMD processors instead of ones supplied by Intel. Even more, Brian Slattery from AMD Australia reports that the new form factor just might become available locally next month.
AMD is reportedly taking a different approach than Intel, refraining from commanding specific configurations and aesthetics. There's speculation that AMD will be using the Brazos 2.0 platform sporting an updated Zacate APU and a Radeon HD 7000 series GPU. Slattery said that it was up to the ultra-thin manufacturers to decide how they adopt the platform.
"They can do what they want with them," Slattery said.
He also added that AMD had conducted talks with a number of manufacturers about the ultra-thin design and one of them was "particularly advanced." Unfortunately, Slattery didn't go into further detail about AMD's ultra-thin form factor, only stating that Apple had previously prepared a version of its MacBook Air running on an AMD processor, but decided to discontinue the project before its release.
Given that AMD's ultra-thin concept may be introduced in Australia next month, there's a good chance we'll see a few working demo units running at CES 2012 next month. We're also hoping AMD will choose an alternative name using something other than "ultra" to differentiate its own design from rival Intel's ultrabook now appearing on store shelves.
UPDATE: AMD used the "ultra-thin" term to describe the form factor, and does not plan to use "ultrathin" as an actual brand. The article has been updated to reflect this. Thanks John!
=D
amd's recent success in the mobile arena will help them even more. intel will not be able to go crazy with prices while amd is competing.
screw all the talk about not competing, amd vs intel is always good.
yea... id rather them spend money getting the single core performance up on future revisions of bulldozer because in mulitcore it easily competes at its price range with intel.
I would strongly consider one of these to replace my wife's anemic Atom based netbook.....
they will compete with "APU" instead of "CPU" in the future
For the name: how about "Slim-Book"? that would be a good laptop for "Slim Shady".
Also, it would be nice to see an ARM based APU from AMD. Isn't it time to "retire" the X86 architecture?
One problem that I see would be the HDD, since SDD are still expensive.
On a related note, is the sandy bridge IGP really THAT bad that it can't play 1080p content smoothly?
Yes, its is that bad, worse image quality, can't even play 23.976fps video without dropping frames like the EU economy.
Even the AMD 780G (the real HD3200) plays those videos flawlessly, and it's from 2008. Also with that IGP you don't get graphical corruption/glitches in games vs intel crappy graphics.
On the other side Llano HD6550D built-in gpu is 3-4times faster than the worthless intel HD3000. It's even worse than the lowest end of APU products.
Where could you POSSIBLY live that you cant get an AMD based laptop shipped to you?? Just go to Amazon, Newegg, TigerDirect, and the the list goes on and on and....