Partners
HEXUS.channel: What is the significance of the "Fusion" rebrand in the light of this move?
AMD: "The Fusion philosophy is at the core of this move: rethinking the business to create competitive advantage through collaboration with partners and through the delivery of competitive platforms.
"Fusion is AMD's working philosophy that marries innovation with collaboration. Far more than just the convergence of microprocessor and graphics technologies, Fusion is the process by which AMD and its partners can ignite next-generation solutions that change the way people work, live and play through an adaptive combination of technology integration, customer intimacy and industry impact."
So as well as being about combining the CPU and the GPU, a new strap line and a piece of software for gamers, Fusion is also about collaboration with partners. Nice to have cleared that up.
HEXUS.channel: Will AMD continue to use TSMC for some of its manufacturing and if so how much and if not when it is expected or planned to stop?
AMD: "TSMC continues to be an important partner of AMD, and we don't expect a dramatic change in the relationship."
We think this statement is rather incredible. With the formation of The Foundry Company, in the medium and longer term,TSMC is not only losing AMD as a customer but gaining an extremely well funded competitor. A knock on effect is that, even in the short-term, NVIDIA may well be able to negotiate much more aggressive pricing with TSMSC which in turn could make graphic cards based on NVIDIA GPU more price-competitive than they might've been.
HEXUS.channel: How is this likely to delay/affect AMD's imminent move from 65nm to 45nm process parts on the CPU side and with an eye to the longer term future the transition from 45nm to 22nm?
AMD: "AMD is currently ramping 45nm production in anticipation of Q4 2008 delivery to customers, and our first available product will be our 45nm Quad-Core CPU codenamed "Shanghai." At this time we are not commenting on our next process technology moves."
So while AMD wasn't at liberty to divulge as much information as we would've liked, with its quarterly earnings imminent, it does seem to think that the culmination of its Asset Smart strategy will contribute to a turn-around in its financial fortunes. Those earnings should give us an idea how realistic that is.
