That’s why I was thrilled to find out that AMD was named one of CRN’s Best Companies to Partner With for 2011. And when I discovered the main criteria for making the list was a company’s ability to help solution providers adapt and succeed in today’s rapidly changing business environment, I couldn’t think of a more rewarding accolade.

It’s no secret we’re living in a volatile time, filled with challenges and just as many opportunities. The consumerization of IT has all but taken over IT; everyone from system integrators to VARs are looking at new ways to take advantage of cloud computing; and the global stock market continues its roller coaster ride with record highs and lows.

When I look at today’s business environment and where the challenges/opportunities lie for the channel, I can’t help but look back on the year and recall a handful of ways AMD is working to help our channel partners succeed:

• We launched our first AMD Fusion APU for small-form-factor, long-battery-life PCs that consumers crave, with the powerful, next-generation visual experiences that can help create a competitive advantage in a hyper-competitive market.
• We celebrated the first AMD VISION Challenge as part of the AMD Youth High-Growth Market campaign designed to empower the technology-savvy millennial group to educate their peers about AMD technology via social media.
• We recently introduced the world’s first 16-core X86 server processor to handle multi-threaded workloads such as cloud computing, virtualization and HPC, along with the AMD Ready Solutions program that enables easier and faster upgrade paths to the AMD Opteron™ 6200 Series processor for our partners and customers.
• And, we welcomed our new CEO, Rory Read who was named one of the Top 10 Channel Advocates of 2011 by CRN for backing our channel partners and ensuring they have the tools needed to be successful.

As someone with over a dozen years working in indirect sales, and currently working for a company that sells 100 percent of its products through the channel, I’ve come to truly appreciate the saying, “there is no ‘i’ in team.” It has prepared me to take on the challenges and opportunities of working with tens of thousands of companies across the world.

I’m happy about what we’ve accomplished together this far, but I’m eager to tackle the next challenge and take advantage of the next opportunity. I have a few ideas what those may be, but would love to hear from you about where you see the market heading… what opportunities are you looking to take advantage of? What challenges can AMD help you address? Shoot me a note or comment below.

David Kenyon is the Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Channel Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only.  Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

First, AMD FX processors do a great job of matching the wants of advanced PC user and enabling that experience on the desktop. AMD FX CPUs are optimized for a wide range of capabilities like content creation, HD media viewing, editing and transcoding, multitasking, multi-threaded gaming, enhanced productivity and AMD CrossFireX™ support. AMD FX processors also take the PC experience to the next level with advanced capabilities like HD media manipulation, overclocking, super resolution and AMD Eyefinity technology support.*

Second, despite the tough economy, PC gaming hardware continues to be a bright spot in the industry. According to Jon Peddie Research, gamers spent $16.6 billion last year on PC gaming hardware alone in 2010¹. This amount is expected to grow to $22 billion by the end of 2011. By taking a quick peek at the hot DirectX 11 gaming titles for the holiday season, the PC gaming hardware market remains very vibrant.

In addition, the desktop has evolved from a platform that once offered high-end performance at a premium cost to high-end performance at a great value. To demonstrate this point, one only needs to look back five years at the evolution of the desktop. In 2006, roughly half of the desktops were less than $700 and the other half were priced between $700-1,499². Fast forward to 2011 and now more than 75 percent of desktops are priced under $700 and only 21 percent are between $700-1499³.

And then, there is the evolved role of the desktop itself.  In my household, the desktop serves as a repository for all the music, video and games that my wife and child decide we have to collect – or that I enjoy collecting myself.  In addition to being a great platform to complete all the productivity applications that are required in managing a household (I like to think of tax accountancy as my 2^nd profession), my desktop has become my home server.  And I know I’m not alone.

Some of our channel partners are already taking advantage of these benefits; including CyberpowerPC, iBUYPOWER and NCIX just to name a few:

• CyberpowerPC is unleashing the Cyberpower Gamer Scorpius lineup of PCs to take full advantage of the AMD “Scorpius” platform, which combines the new AMD FX 8-core processor, an AMD 9-series chipset motherboard and AMD Radeon^TM HD 6000 Series graphics.
• iBUYPOWER has created a program to give customers the best indication of their system’s performance before they purchases it. So now, iBUYPOWER can recommend the best-possible settings, from Low all the way up to Max. Needless to say, they gave AMD FX 8-core processors its MAX rating in their Optimal Settings Program.
• To celebrate the long-awaited AMD FX series launch, NCIX partnered up with ASUS and Corsair in order to bring end-users the very best AMD has to offer with a top-to-bottom lineup based on 4-, 6- and 8-core AMD processors.

As you can see, there’s a lot of excitement around the new AMD FX CPUs. Personally, I’m proud AMD has delivered a CPU end-users can’t wait to get their hands on. But what I might be more excited about is the potential this product has for the channel to help grow their business and turn the World’s Fastest CPU into a “profitability machine”.

David Kenyon is the Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Channel Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only.  Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

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* AMD’s product warranty does not cover damages caused by overclocking, even when overclocking is enabled via AMD  software.

¹ Source: Jon Peddie Research, Volume 11, Number 9 (May 3, 2011)

² Source: AMD Green Book (June 2011)

³ Source: AMD Green Book (June 2011)

As summer comes to an end – everywhere except here in Texas, that is – so does the award season and all of its glamour. Before we bid a final farewell, I’d like to take a minute or two to send special congratulations to a few hardworking channel partners who took home some hardware late last month at AMD’s inaugural North America Executive Commercial Channel Summit.

I can honestly say that the community of channel partners surrounding AMD is second to none, yet a select few stood out this year by working closely with AMD and sharing in mutual success.  While I wish we could acknowledge all of our incredible channel partners, a special thank you goes out to the following award winners:

• VAR of the Year: Compucom
• DMR of the Year: PC Connection
• Distributor of the Year: Synnex

Events like the Summit that we recently held in Napa Valley are a great reminder of the importance of meeting face to face and getting honest feedback about what AMD is doing right, what we can do better, and how we can be the best vendor possible. Not only do we get to celebrate a great year, but we get invaluable insight into how we can improve for next year.

The feedback I received at the Summit was extremely encouraging. Most channel partners I spoke with noted the effort we put into activating the global AMD Fusion Partner Program to include all levels and types of channel partners, and how we expanded commercial resources, increased OEM alignment, and increased co-marketing funding.

AMD has grown our field sales organization by increasing our enterprise sales team, as well as adding DMR, VAR, Distribution, and Midmarket field coverage.  We’ve also formalized our programs from a regional VAR-only program to the AMD Fusion Partner Program, which opens up a number of resources to the commercial channel (sales enablement, product/sales training, marketing campaigns, etc.).

At AMD, we work hard to be a strong industry partner to our channel community, and we pride ourselves on delivering superior products, services and marketing resources to help our channel partners differentiate themselves in the increasingly competitive marketplace.

Combine these new resources with the AMD Fusion Family of APUs, and our channel partners have all of the makings for a great year with AMD. Keep a lookout for even more updates to our commercial channel partner program. Congratulations again to Compucom, PC Connection and Synnex for their hard work, and I look forward to handing out even more hardware next year!

Tony Fernandez-Stoll is the vice president, Americas Regional Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only.  Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

As a continuation to my previous CompTIA blog post about cloud computing, all things security was also top of mind in Washington, DC, where conference attendees wanted to know about best practices in the channel on how-to secure mobile devices to the private, public and hybrid clouds. CompTIA released the results of their eighth annual Trends in Information Security study.

While I agree that it’s paramount to have world-class security, when planning your company’s security needs one must also take into account that security solutions don’t impair workers’ ability to perform their day-to-day job functions. It’s a careful balance that must be achieved, protecting data while supporting mobility for increased worker productivity.

IT departments are embracing mobility and cloud computing, but weighing their risks too. Unfortunately, we all see the news headlines that security threats are continuing to increase instead of wane…and that’s just the ones that are publicized. Check out the recent BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) hacker attack example.

So what can VARs, MSPs, system builders and the rest of the channel learn from the attack on the MYBart cloud-based service to help customers strike a balance between business and IT needs…

First, to address growing security concerns, you must examine security features at all levels of an IT system. AMD’s technology enables security features at all levels, from the processor, to IT hardware, to software applications. With the goal of establishing robust security measures across platforms, AMD is providing hardware acceleration to enable fast and secure data encryption and decryption using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) in AMD’s mainstream notebook and desktop Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), and the upcoming “Bulldozer” core for desktops and servers.

Second, you’ll need products that also support capabilities to establish trust and transparency in a remote and highly dynamic shared “cloud” environment. While this process can be a challenge, the solution begins with platform integrity guarantees. The hardware and firmware platform must be able to ensure that it is configured and operating as designed. It must be able to reliably report these facts in a verifiable manner, to the cloud infrastructure and management layers as well as to the tenants and users of the cloud. Additionally, the platform must be able to extend its own integrity guarantees and reporting capabilities to the higher layer software and services in order to establish end-to-end trust and transparency across all the architectural layers of the cloud.

Furthermore, an open standards approach to security is just as important to any technology innovation. This maximizes interoperability for hardware system and software and also supports a platform for the development of additional features and innovative security applications, which is where our technology partners really shine. There will always be a need and opportunities for VAR and MSP specialization. The rapid evolution of security risks in cyberspace cannot be solved by any one company.

AMD is committed to helping our channel partners address IT security by conducting technology research and working with industry organizations like the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) as well as governments at a global level to promote strong security protections. Together with our customers and partners, we can achieve a healthy balance between business and IT needs, maintaining data protection while enhancing information access on the go.

I’d like to hear from you on how security is shaping your company’s mobility and cloud computing strategies. In my next CompTIA blog post, I’ll discuss the latest mobility trends. To be continued…

David Kenyon is Corp. VP, Worldwide Channel Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only.  Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

It’s clear that these are the top challenges and opportunities that our commercial channel partners are facing right now. A major take away from my time in D.C. is that whether you’re a VAR or a managed service provider struggling with the notion of cloud computing, or a solutions provider searching for the latest information to secure your customer’s mobile devices, you’re not alone. CompTIA released the results of their second annual cloud survey.

Power Panel at CompTIA Breakaway with Fellow Channel Chiefs

Part One: Cloud Computing

With everyone rushing to the cloud, VARs and managed service providers are being asked to become experts at deploying private, public or hybrid clouds overnight. If you don’t have a cloud computing strategy, you’re likely working on one. Cloud computing is one of the hottest trends in IT, promising significant revenue opportunities for the channel. Research firm In-Stat projects cloud computing and managed hosting spending by U.S. businesses to surpass $13 billion in 2014. Additionally, cloud and traditional service providers will account for 12 percent of IT infra­structure spending, growing to 20 percent by 2014. And clearly no one wants to be left behind.

This is great news for the channel, but it also has its challenges. I’m seeing an increase in news articles about cloud computing and how it’s changing the framework of long-standing vendor partner programs. Who stands to gain the most from cloud computing? Naturally, the question that I was frequently asked at Breakaway was, “How is AMD helping its channel partners take advantage of the cloud phenomenon?”

It’s a great question. First and foremost, AMD is enabling its partners to capitalize on the cloud computing phenomenon by providing them with both technology and resources. Our AMD Opteron™ processors enable powerful, efficient, and cost effective data centers. In turn, our channel partners are able to build a flexible, responsive cloud environment that can meet a wide range of performance and power efficiency needs using AMD technology.

But even more importantly, AMD stands for expanded choices for customers and opportunities for VARs to grow their businesses. Beyond offering industry-leading products to help our partners’ cash in on the cloud phenomenon, AMD constantly looks at how-to become a better partner with you. Through the AMD Fusion Partner Program, there are several foundation, connection and acceleration benefits to help partners grow their business profitably, including: Marketing Acceleration Funds, Peak Performer Programs, AMD Rewards, AMD Sales Leads and dedicated, personal AMD support for partner sales representatives, marketing activities and customer technical support. Our partner program is constantly evolving to better meet the needs of our partner community and I welcome your feedback on how we’re doing.

For many out there, that sounds like the standard set of things vendors say to channel partners.  However, if you’ve been in our program in the past two years, you know we’re working hard to prove that we’re different, that we’re engaged in your business, and that we are very committed to supporting growth.

There were too many great discussions at CompTIA Breakaway to capture in one blog post alone; I’ll discuss more (specifically related to mobility and security) in upcoming blog posts. To be continued…

David Kenyon is Corp. VP, Worldwide Channel Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only.  Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

The first three months in my new role have simply flown by. I’ve been travelling all across the region to meet our channel partners face-to-face and gain a deeper understanding of the issues they are facing.  Given the emphasis organizations within my region place on personal contact, I firmly believe that regular face-to-face meetings and direct relationships is a crucial part of my role. It’s certainly a vital part of business within Italy and Greece, as proven by a recent press and customer event we held in Athens in June to express our commitment to the region and ensure our partners have full awareness of our product stack, both legacy and future, and have the right information to support strong sales.

Having spent time talking to many channel partners both at that event and during my recent travels, I’m acutely aware of the fact that the region, especially Greece, is facing some difficult economic circumstances. But, despite these challenging times, I believe there are numerous opportunities for growth, expansion and development and I’ve already heard positive feedback from partners about the way in which AMD’s products are suited to current market conditions.

With businesses looking for better value from their technology investments, a number of the channel partners I’ve spoken with have told me that AMD’s offerings are becoming even more attractive to their customers. As finances are squeezed across the public and private sectors, organizations expect greater performance from their investment but they also want to pay a price that is in line with their budget. Our channel partners have told me that the economic uncertainty has opened up an opportunity for them to promote the real value of technologies like AMD APU while our price / performance balance point is a message which is resonating well across the region.

This value message is one we will continue to promote locally and EMEA-wide.  In line with this commitment, another focus that is resonating with our partners is our AMD Fusion Partner Program (FPP). The FPP continues to be refined and improved to spotlight what works best and deliver what makes most sense, i.e. in southern EMEA messaging focused on the benefits of the technology instead of the technical details make the most impact so that is how we will hone our agenda. This is a key element of the FPP in ensuring channel partners are equipped with the right tools, language and messaging to help sell products to customers.

So what’s next? For my part, I’m preparing the component channel for the opportunities which lie ahead.  The introduction of the APU has marked a major turning point in the industry. Over the next few months, with solutions based on platforms codenamed “Brazos” and “Lynx” making their way into the market, we’re going to see a significant shift in technology trends and practices. It’s an exciting time, and I’m keen to ensure our channel partners in Italy and Greece reap the rewards.

To view this blog in Italian please go to this link: http://blogs.amd.com/news/2011/08/15/channel-spotlight-italy-greece-riflettori-sul-canale-in-italia-e-in-grecia-il-contatto-diretto-e-ancora-importante/

Simona Cazzani is a sales manager at AMD. Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only.  Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

It may seem obvious, but keeping customers top-of-mind is often lost in today’s hypercompetitive world of technology sales, especially as vendors and solution providers vie for the all-mighty dollar. And while ensuring customer satisfaction is at the center of what we do here at AMD, the roads we take to get there are equally important.

We’ve been hard at work the past year ramping up the commercial track of the AMD Fusion Partner Program (FPP) so our program partners have everything they need to help them market and sell AMD products more effectively. We’ve increased the number of  Elite partners by more than 60 percent since launching the commercial track last year, rolled out the AMD Fusion Partner Portal – a key tool for communicating with  our commercial partners – and beefed up our channel sales representatives by more than 36 percent since Q4 of last year.

The AMD FPP also offers commercial solution providers and volume resellers a variety of unique marketing campaigns to help build awareness and generate demand, sales and technology support tools, and provides a single source for expanding product portfolios with high-performance AMD solutions. Through the AMD FPP, AMD channel partners receive the resources and performance incentives to help them motivate their sales team as well as co-marketing funds for joint marketing efforts to succeed into today’s highly competitive market.

What does this mean for our program partners and end-customers? Michael Diamond, a services sales manager for one of our Elite commercial partners, Agilysys, said it best: “Today’s AMD model, with the addition of an AMD liaison, has allowed us the ability to shift our focus to a more targeted customer centric strategy. Having a dedicated channel manager focused on growing the Agilysys customer base, along with the new AMD Fusion Partner Program, has motivated Agilysys to increase our focus and marketing efforts on the AMD product line. These changes have solidified the Agilysys/AMD relationship for years to come.”

As I mentioned at the onset of this blog post, putting together the best product portfolio won’t get you there alone. Yes, it’s every vendor’s job to create the best products, as is aggressively marketing and selling those products, but I believe that creating the entire support infrastructure to help channel partners provide customers with the solutions that match their needs will ultimately drive success.

A win for AMD. A win for our channel partners. And, most importantly, a win for our customers. That’s what’s shaping up in the commercial channel marketing track at AMD today.

David Kenyon is Corp. VP, Worldwide Channel Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only.  Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

A few quick examples:

• We introduced a shorter depth server (the Relion 105) for a customer that had two post racks and limited depth. Meeting these space requirements was a key differentiator for the customer in order to get the most out of their data center.
• We helped pioneer 1U servers with three hot swap drives bays to enable RAID-5, doubling the available storage vs. the competition’s two drive chassis.
• We developed a 2U chassis with 6 high capacity hard drives, optical drive and interface to an external tape library for one of our biggest retail customers, which went on to become one of our most successful products.

When AMD asked us if we thought our customers would be interested in products tailored specifically to support the fastest clock speeds available for AMD Opteron™ x86 CPUs, we were enthusiastic about the possibilities, especially in the HPC and financial industries.  Financial customers in particular ask for high clock rates to get the quickest results. High speed number crunching is the name of the game. As such, we knew they would benefit greatly from tweaking the standard AMD Opteron™ 4100 Series processors to achieve faster cores that deliver greater I/O per core, helping lower latency and reduce bottlenecks.  Additionally, energy consumption is a big concern so we knew we needed to design a server that took the layout and thermal design heavily into consideration.*

The Penguin Computing Altus 1750 is the result.  It has a chassis and board design optimized to keep the CPU’s cool, a built-in SAS interface to support the fastest spinning and lowest latency hard drives without using an expansion slot, high-performance built-in network interfaces and two x16 wired expansion slots with plenty of performance for additional network interfaces like Infiniband and 10G Ethernet.  Exactly what our customers want.

We’re pleased to see the excitement that this new product has generated in the marketplace and are looking forward to delivering this design to customers.  When combined with our experience in delivering completely integrated and racked solutions, customers can expect a truly amazing “out of box” experience.  The box in this case being a crate with all your new servers, switches, and other infrastructure wired and ready to go.  As they say on the Internet:

1. Open crate

2. Roll rack down ramp

3. Plug in

4. Profit!

Phillip Pokorny is the Chief Technology Officer at Penguin Computing. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

* Please consult with your AMD representative for technical documentation.

Actually, the symposium theme is one that’s near to my heart; at AMD we live it every day. And as I sat in the audience and listened to the first speaker, Melissa Mohr, an associate brand manager from Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, I found myself reflecting back on previous roles, different industry experiences, and the overall importance of competition.

Earlier in my career, I worked as the head of marketing for the Enterprise Tape Group within StorageTek Corporation.  As its name indicates, StorageTek–commonly referred to as STK–grew up around the innovations of a couple of ex-IBM engineers in the storage field.  The company produced products that attached to the mainframe server made by IBM, a product that had a near-monopoly on business server installations in the ‘70s.  It shouldn’t be surprising to learn IBM wasn’t too excited about anyone else selling storage to attach to its mainframes.  In fact, most industry observers at the time concluded IBM tried everything they could to stifle STK’s early beginnings.  But STK’s products were far superior to what IBM produced in terms of cost of ownership, performance, and usability.  Consequently, customers demanded the STK gear.  In fact, over time STK’s tape libraries eventually enjoyed nearly a 90% market share in the enterprise segment of the space, attached to IBM’s mainframes in all of those IBM accounts!  In about a decade, ironically enough, STK had flipped to become the “Goliath” in the secondary storage space.  And so the story continued, until the company was purchased by Sun in 2006.

Reflecting back on the experience, it’s clear that a number of innovations that were brought to market never would have happened if there were only one choice for mainframe storage.  History shows STK forced IBM to innovate, cut costs and build better products than they would have otherwise.

The analog in the semiconductor industry is similar. Without AMD, how fast would Intel have gone on to introduce new products?  Where would prices be?  And now that AMD Fusion APUs are in the marketplace, a fundamental departure from the world of chips dominated by CPU performance benchmarks, the status quo has once again shifted and we are all about to see how much better the world gets for our consumers.

Sitting in that auditorium at Rice, with some truly bright MBA students and marketing professionals all around me, I realized something important: I’m excited about competing with Goliath. I’ve been doing it for so long – in different industries and markets –it’s something I’ve come to truly enjoy. And you want to know why? I’m convinced—and history shows—that when there’s a David to take on Goliath, it’s always the customer who benefits the most.  And that’s something I expect we can all appreciate.

David Kenyon is the Corporate VP of Worldwide Channel Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only.  Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

I get it. The embedded business hasn’t ever really been the darling of the media (iPad, I’m looking at you). Every business segment has their champions: the graphics business has gamers to rave about The Next Big Thing; servers have Facebook and Google to demonstrate their mind boggling might. Even a quick stroll through an electronics store or PC mall reveals a dazzling array of computers in various shapes, sizes & colors.

If the notebook business is like your flamboyant, life-of-the-party Aunt Ruth who always wears something outrageous to family reunions, the embedded business would be the equivalent of Uncle Herbert who always stands at the back of the room near the food, speaking only when spoken to.

So when I travelled to Embedded World in Nürnberg earlier this month, I confess I was expecting to talk to folks more along the lines of Uncle Herbert. Boy was I wrong.

I wrote recently about how AMD Fusion really is a game changing technology. Want proof? Take a look at what AMD is doing these days in the embedded market by introducing AMD Fusion APUs for embedded systems. How about 64-bit x86 CPUS and a DirectX® 11-capable GPU built into a package the size of a penny? And at a max TDP of 9W?  Clearly, this is not for your father’s embedded market. This is the latest and greatest technology AMD has to offer because we pushed boundaries that nobody else is capable of pushing.

Think about what the latest in x86 based technology—what AMD Fusion APUs–can do here. Enterprise class performance. Low power. Embedded-specific features. Platforms combining CPUs and GPUs that allows AMD to provide high levels of integration, very low power, and an emerging visual experience that rivals the consumer market.

Something else caught my attention at Embedded World. In vertical markets for these systems—I’m thinking thin client, medical imaging, point of sale & kiosk, gaming machines, digital signage—there’s an important common element: a very strong visual component. APUs are an ideal solution here—with the CPU and GPU communicating together in a very efficient way on the die, AMD has come up with a solution that really, nobody else has, one that can provide incredible graphics capability.

And as a greater number of end-user applications become graphically driven, applications such as medical imaging will actually start to drive change in the semiconductor market.  As the need grows for smaller devices which use less power and generate less heat—and which might not have room for a cooling fan—(say, for example, casino gaming) those physical restrictions won’t constrain what’s technologically possible as much as they have in the past. As my colleague Buddy Broeker notes, there’s no telling what new categories of product our customers can dream up with the capabilities provided by the new AMD Embedded G-Series Platform.

And while visuals are becoming increasingly important in the embedded space just as they have in other market segments, we know that we still have many customers in more traditional embedded markets as well, those working with what are called “headless” applications, without a screen, monitor, or input device and which don’t require a graphics solution. These deeply embedded or headless systems are in, for example, industrial controls or telecommunications and networking environments. Here customers need an ever-increasing amount of CPU performance to keep up with demands on the system, but also need as lean a component as we can provide. For them, we’ve introduced products that feature our latest core (code-named “Bobcat”)—the same new micro-architecture as featured in our APUs.

Finally, to match the level of product commitment to this market segment, we announced at Embedded World a new chapter in the AMD Fusion Partner Program for the embedded business called the Systems and Technology track. Because we realized the growing importance of this market segment, we knew we had to incorporate the embedded business into our global channel partners program. We’re making a host of benefits, resources, and technological support available for embedded partners, something that we’ve never done on a globally consistent basis before. And while we recognize how complicated the embedded business can be, with thousands of different kinds of partners in the channel, we’ve still organized the track as we have in other segments, based on how partners go to market not just who they sell to. I’ll admit it: I’m proud we’re sensitive to the way our partners do business, not just the way AMD does it. In short, we’ve spent the time necessary doing our homework while designing this track.

So whether it’s a focus on generating demand, providing marketing and sales information, or offering product enablement, AMD is there for our embedded customers and partners. And when those exciting new products, enabled by AMD Fusion technology, come to market—and they will–we’ll be standing right there with our partners, providing the support, benefits, and incentives they need to grow their business in this hugely fascinating and highly competitive market.

I think I have a new favorite uncle.

David Kenyon is Corporate VP of Worldwide Channel Marketing for AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.