AMD Fusion chips for netbooks, laptops ahead of schedule

From InfoWorld: Advanced Micro Devices is ahead of schedule with its upcoming Fusion chips, which will appear first in netbooks and low-end laptops early next year, but not in tablets, the company said on Thursday.

Interest from customers pushed AMD to accelerate the development of a low-power Fusion chip code-named Ontario, which the company will start shipping for revenue in the fourth quarter, AMD CEO Dirk Meyer said during a conference call to discuss the company's earnings.

"The timeline for Ontario has changed dramatically," Meyer said.

The company showed in June the first chips based on the Fusion architecture, which combines CPU and GPU (graphics processing unit) cores in the same chip. The Ontario Fusion chip has two x86 processor cores and a DirectX 11 GPU chip.

Ontario should make AMD more competitive in areas such as netbooks, which are currently dominated by Intel. The chip will bring improved graphics to devices that have smaller screens and consume little power, Meyer said.

"It'll position well against Atom," he said.

Intel's Atom chips for netbooks include integrated graphics chips but still have been criticized for poor graphics performance. An integrated DirectX 11-capable processor should allow playback of full 1080p video on small screens.

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