AMD to Make a Tablet Chip in the Future
AMD Fusion to someday power a tablet? Sure, someday.
Right now the tablet market appears to be owned by Apple and the technology powering it is from ARM. Intel already announced intentions to compete head-on with a new Atom platform called Oak Trail.
AMD up to this point did not view the tablet market as a place for big opportunity. That attitude could be changing, especially after seeing how much success Apple's been having with its giant iPod touch.
AMD CEO Dirk Meyer believes that the iPad's success in the market wasn't a fluke and that tablets are here to stay.
"I expect we're going to see tablets in various form factors and thicknesses over time. From everything we understand today, it's still a pretty new market," Meyer said in the third quarter financials conference call.
As for what AMD's stance is on tablet hardware, Meyer continued, "A tablet would optimally have power dissipation of two to three watts, which is a little more than half of what a fanless Netbook would tolerate. I expect customers will take components designed with Netbooks in mind and put them in tablets. And I think you'll see AMD solutions in tablets in the next couple of years for that reason. … We'll show up with a differentiated offering with great graphics and video technology."
The tablet wave will be hitting in 2011 with iPad competitors, so wouldn't AMD already be late to the party if it doesn't already have a solution? Not in AMD's mind. Right now, the company's success comes from desktop and server processors.
"It's [a market] we'll devote significant R&D energy towards when the market is big enough to justify that investment," he added. "Frankly, we're still so small in the notebook market that it doesn't make sense for us to turn R&D dollar spending toward the tablet market yet. We'll start doing that when the market is big enough."
Source: Cnet.
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Although of course if they could produce a chip with enough power for a netbook within that power envelope they'd suddenly have a huge wedge of the netbook market opening up for them. Large 'if' though
Well power effieciency is something they do well, sounds like a perfect application for AMD tech if you ask me.
They should really make up their mind on that one, a few weeks ago they said they weren't into that market and now they are.
However, it's a good move. With Intel scaling x86 down to that level, AMD would be foolish to stay out of that very lucrative market. It seems as if AMD is betting heavily on SoC systems and I agree with them. An SoC is smaller, cheaper, more power efficient and has better GPU/CPU collaboration.
On the short term, it's also a smart way of infusing their ageing CPU architecture with their excellent graphics products. Phenom II-derivates are going to suffer against Sandy Bridge, but Phenom's (likely) superior grahpics core could make up for that in systems intended for every day use and/or light gaming (especially now that GPU acceleration is finally becoming a reality in apps ranging from browsers to image editing software and everything in between).
Although of course if they could produce a chip with enough power for a netbook within that power envelope they'd suddenly have a huge wedge of the netbook market opening up for them. Large 'if' though
They already have that chip, it's Bobcat and it's going to be released pretty soon. It's an out of order Atom with better graphics and roughly identical TDP. Early, incomplete benchmarks give it a significant lead over Atom, so expect them to get a big chunk of the market in the netbook segment in 2011.
I meant in the tablet TDP, looking back at what I wrote I threw in "power" a bit liberally - when I said "enough power for a netbook" I meant processing power, but with a TDP of say 2W. (I think Bobcat is 10W - a good start though)