Is the Fusion the future?
We concluded by asking Kenyon how he would like today's AMD to be perceived by consumers. "For the consumer, our focus is on providing a better integrated visual experience," he said. "We believe there's a fundamental opportunity in the way that the PC is marketed today, with most of the market not having made up their mind what they're going to buy.
"Ultimately it comes down to what they're going to do with the machine and how that affects how they choose. So a lot of our efforts are directed towards making graphics matter and making it an overall net better experience with AMD on AMD. Then it will become obvious to people that there's a different choice here than just marketing the chip name."
This comes down to AMD's platform message, as manifested so far by Spider and Dragon, which has yet to capture the popular imagination. "We haven't marketed it well at all," said Kenyon. "Controlling all three parts allows you to fundamentally change the experience for the customer: how graphics are displayed, how memory and things are managed, so you do have a material impact on the customer.
"So what we're trying to do now is to up-level not just how we're telling the story, but putting things in place that allow you to experience it, like our Fusion Media Utility, that allow you to fine-tune the experience and control the settings that totally change the way you interact with the machine when you're using all AMD parts."
Our overall impression of Kenyon was of a straight talking person who isn't afraid to make tough decisions and ruffle feathers if he thinks it's for the greater good of AMD. With the industry still waiting for the technological fruits of the ATI acquisition to be revealed, Kenyon will probably have to do just that if he is to ensure AMD is perceived as more than just a bargaining chip to be used in negotiations with Intel.
