Apple May Be Digging AMD's Fusion APU
Apple may or may not be eyeballing AMD's upcoming Fusion APUs.
During the annual AMD Financial Analyst Day presentation last week, Senior VP and Chief Sales Officer Emilio Ghilardi showed a slide (#7, in fact) featuring iMacs and Mac Pros. Since then, rumors have surfaced that Apple has been named as one of many companies having signed up for AMD's Fusion Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), slated for a launch early next year.
However AMD quickly swooped in and cleared the air. "Neither Apple nor AMD have made any announcements regarding Fusion in any future Apple product," said AMD Senior PR Manager Chris Hook. He added that Apple is merely an AMD hardware partner, and is not listed as a Fusion customer.
It's still curious as to why AMD would flash an iMac / Mac Pro slide during a Fusion APU presentation unless Ghilardi was referencing Apple's use of Radeon graphics. The company said last week that some Fusion shipments have already landed into manufacturers' hands, giving way to speculation that Apple could be toying with the APUs in pre-production test units. With that said, Apple may not be an official signed partner until the company determines if the product is right for the Apple brand.
In the meantime, AMD's upcoming APU definitely looks promising. "With our upcoming AMD Fusion APUs combining our DirectX 11-capable graphics processors and next-generation microprocessors on a single chip, we are poised to lead the industry’s next computing era with richer, more vivid digital experiences," said Dirk Meyer, AMD president and CEO during the Financial Analyst Day event.
To see AMD's Fusion technology in action, check out the video below (if you haven't already).
Apple doesn't want to go to multiple vendors (that defeats the whole "it just works" philosophy). They want a single provider. AMD can offer a CPU Chipset+GPU solution at every level (on-die with Fusion to discrete with Radeon). It just makes sense with Apple's business strategy.
Still, knowing Apple, it will be overpriced.
not to demean the APU in the least, it's just they are way behind when it comes to software support.
not to demean the APU in the least, it's just they are way behind when it comes to software support.
Super-overpriced!
but this APU looks promising, might try one in the future
future laptop will be more smaller i guess ~
Apple doesn't want to go to multiple vendors (that defeats the whole "it just works" philosophy). They want a single provider. AMD can offer a CPU Chipset+GPU solution at every level (on-die with Fusion to discrete with Radeon). It just makes sense with Apple's business strategy.
Still, knowing Apple, it will be overpriced.
But that high end quad core could very well be a bulldozer design combined with a radeon gpu when it's time for the next upgrade of the mac line in about 6-7 months time.
Then mac users when Apple "switched" to the I.B.M. Power PC CPU talked bad about Intel.
Then mac users when Apple again "switched" to using Intel CPU's talked bad about AMD (yes,I see this recently on forums where Mac users occasionally visit.
How ironic it would be if Mac users started using AMD CPU's in some of their models.
I dont get why AMD is not as active as nVidia when it comes to software support. They are releasing APU's and yet there is not many STREAM or OpenCL apps
That was the opening statement of this artical in bold, at the time of my post.. in case it gets changed later.
I just want to say, what an incredibly pointless sentence that only clarifies that you simply don't know something.. duhh.. thanks for sharing with us what you DO NOT know...