Video vehemence
Sobon was herself a marketing director at Dell before joining AMD. We asked her how useful she finds that experience in her current role. "I find it invaluable at times, in terms of realising what OEMs care about. Knowing the customer brand is what matters."
And it seems to be getting results. Sobon was quick to point out that AMD's second generation ultra-thin (2GUT) - previously codenamed Congo - already has 22 design wins and the mainstream notebook - Tigris - platform already has 40. That's a lot better than we saw with their respective predecessors - Yukon and Puma.
Among those design wins is the Acer Ferrari One, which is gives AMD a good opportunity to demonstrate both its Vision and its 2GUT platforms in one. We weren't surprised to learn that Sobon has one. "It's my notebook now and I'm very pleased with it," she said. "ID is the number one thing people look for; it's got this coolness factor."
"I use it as a great example of how Vision technology can support OEMs, but it's not the lead feature - it's a secondary element. Especially since there's such a large processor-aware community, they can have problems with things they might perceive as marketing fluff.
"We think this is a whole new category between netbooks and notebooks, and you don't create a new category without a breadth of product. But ultimately it's about how the OEM chooses to merchandise it.
"From a processor point of view it can multitask a lot better, but let's talk about it as a platform - you need good graphics. It's all about video. The [iPod] Nano can do video now. Our platform refreshes for the next couple of years will be all about video."
We were starting to get the impression that video is quite important to Sobon and AMD, but just to be sure, we asked Sobon to summarise AMD's strategy going forward and she answered: "It's video, stupid!"
We get the picture Leslie.
