A brutal battle is set to spin out in Australia between Intel and arch rival AMD, who yesterday threw down the gauntlet to the maker of the new Intel Sandy Bridge processor by introducing their own “Fusion” technology which the US Company claims is faster, delivers superior power management and is cooler than what Intel are offering with Sandy Bridge.At a press event in Sydney yesterday Leslie Sobon corporate vice president, product marketing at AMD said that vendors around the world were set to roll out several PC’s running the new AMD technology. One major vendor attending the event said “What is attractive about the AMD offering is that it appears superior to what Intel are offering with Sandy Bridge and it is cheaper for manufacturers to purchase. This allows us to pass on cost savings to consumers”.
They added” While AMD do not have the same brand credentials as Intel I believe that consumers will quickly work out that what AMD is offering with Fusion is a new level of computing especially for video and audio content and for those who do a lot of graphic processing”.
Sobon told a packed audience that their new processing technology delivers higher computing speed, superior graphics experience, and longer battery life. The company said Fusion-powered systems will bring supercomputer-like performance, and places AMD one step ahead of rival Intel. She also said that Netbooks in the past which primarily ran Intel Atom processors were slow and that the new Fusion technology would make a big difference to both netbooks and tablets including the new Acer Windows tablet that comes with a keyboard docking station.
She also admitted that recent corruption investigation of Intel and the decision by European and US regulators to slap Intel with multibillion dollar fine for illegally attempting to push AMD out of the market had created a level playing field that helped with the introduction of Fusion.
Currently Intel who are still under investigation in Japan and Korea is being monitored by both US and European regulators.
Analysts say the move may help AMD recoup some of the market share lost to its bigger rival over past years, but is not expected to radically transform Intel’s tactics.
AMD’s fusion family of accelerated processing units (APUs), a single die design, combines multi-core CPU (x86 technology) with DirectX 11-capable graphics and a parallel processing engine.
Over 11 fusion-based systems are being introduced in Australia by manufacturers including Acer, MSI, Sony, HP, Dell, Lenovo, Asus and Toshiba, AMD said.
Sobon said “AMD Fusion marks a monumental shift in computing performance, experience and possibilities because of the powerful combination, of CPUs and discrete-level GPUs. This will also allow our partners to offer exciting new form factors on a robust computing platform. With the APU technology in our stable, we will define the industry standard in personal computing.”
Earlier in the day Intel was forced to announce that they had stopped and recalled all shipments of the ‘Cougar Point’ chipset, affecting all laptops and desktops which use its new Sandy Bridge processor.
This morning Samsung offered to refund any consumers that had purchased one of their notebooks running the new Intel technology Intel explained that the problem was with its Series 6 chipsets that are used in all new Sandy Bridge-based laptop and desktop PCs.
Shortly after the recall Intel cut its first-revenue forecast by $300 million with the total costs of repairing and replacing the faulty chip estimated to be around $700 million dollars.
