You may have noticed in print and online that today AMD has begun talking about itself a bit differently. Today, we’d like the world to know that we believe the future is Fusion. Clearly we are in the branding exercise … let me explain.

We have seen a number of trends within the PC industry start to converge over the last few years and it’s changing how people are using computers. For example, the convergence of inexpensive, powerful servers and the rising cost of energy – creating a huge market for virtualization in the data center. Also note the convergence of new price points coupled with legions of new users in hard-charging economies like China and India – placing a greater importance on the PC usage experience and elevating the role of graphics in delivering that experience.

These things among others are rapidly reshaping the PC industry in both the server and client worlds. In the server world, things are becoming more tailored to use; less “show me your benchmarks” and more “show me how this server handles with my specific workload.” In the client world, we see the opposite. Client computing has become frustratingly complex and users want simplification; client-side users want to be told in simple terms what’s right for their needs – whether at work, home or at play – and don’t want to be bothered with geek-speak.

Given the dramatic industry, macroeconomic and environmental changes that we see underway, I felt that now was the right time for companies like ours to more clearly and effectively articulate our role and unique value in the market. As the new CMO, I went to the market, our partners, our customers and the industry and solicited feedback about what AMD’s role has been and should be.

What I heard most consistently is that AMD is known for delivering “the next big thing” first.

AMD was first to native multi-core, first to x86 64-bit, first to break the 1GHz (one billion clock cycles per second) barrier with the AMD Athlon™ processor, first to enable the sub US$1,000 PC market, and first to market with graphics cards packed with teraFLOPS processing power to name a few. Even our competition accepts this, and works hard to match our technology and approaches.

What also came through loud and clear in terms of what differentiates AMD is how we:

• integrate technology to do new things
• how we collaborate intimately with our customers to help solve their problems
• and how we impact the market

Let’s go back in time for a minute and examine the x86 64-bit inflection point. AMD believed that extending the x86 instruction set (or backwards compatibility) into 64-bit was going to be crucial to the market. While “others” said that bringing 64-bit to the masses would require radical and expensive (read “proprietary”) changes in both hardware and software, we said we could do better. AMD said that we would bring 64-bit to the masses using the existing software people depended upon. We could reduce the cost and the complexity of moving to 64-bit for both our partners and their customers.  We knew it that people would not have to flush the substantial investments they’d made in their existing 32-bit infrastructures to migrate to 64-bit. And in April, 2003 we proved that it was indeed possible with the launch of the AMD Opteron™ processor – the world’s first x86-64 bit microprocessor.

In the workplace, AMD was the first to demonstrate both the world’s first x86 dual-core processor and the first native quad-core x86 processor. In the home, AMD invented 3DNOW! Technology, the first x86 innovation to significantly enhance 3D graphics and multimedia for PCs. Fused with unique software utilities such as AMD OverDrive™ and ATI Catalyst™ Control Center, AMD platforms empower gamers everywhere to push the boundaries of performance.¹

Our strategy is to keep combining technologies together to improve the user experience and drive efficiency into the data center. While some say superior results can be achieved by a homogenous approach, we believe the future lies in combining CPU and GPU technologies into a single unit. Our objective?  Better graphics for the clients and accelerated computing for the servers – all done using less power.

The challenge was how to say this in a simple way. To address that problem we collaborated closely with our creative team. They pointed out that we had already socialized one of the most important landmarks on our product roadmap –our intent to combine CPUs with GPUs on a single chip – under the code name “Fusion.”

The creative team asked, why not use “Fusion” as an umbrella term to capture a bigger concept? A concept that not only expressed how we integrate technologies, but also the differentiated approach AMD takes with our partners and the resulting impact we have on the market.

That brings us to today and the launch of AMD’s Fusion corporate brand launch. Along with that new brand identity comes an integrated marketing campaign. A full page ad – AMD’s Fusion manifesto – is running around the world in print and online publications starting today, and no doubt you will see our new Fusion corporate brand identity spread across the breadth AMD’s marketing mix over the next few months (and with much fewer words than the manifesto).

But we’re aware that full page ads in a newspaper will only get us so far. We wanted to go a step further. We wanted people to be able to feel Fusion and experience it for themselves in a fun and tangible way. To that end also launching today is the AMD Fusion for Gaming utility beta. This patented and freely downloadable utility enables people to experience greater performance on AMD-based PCs with a simple click of a button. The utility works by temporarily reducing resource-consuming background services while boosting compute performance with a number of advanced acceleration technologies.²

Advanced users may also customize profiles by selecting specific processes for temporary disablement, and degrees of hardware tuning depending on usage scenarios. These users can also dial-in their machines for the type of experience they want in any given usage situation. That could be working on a plane, watching a Blu-Ray movie on one of the new Blu-ray equipped laptops or just powering through as much work as they can on a single battery charge. We’re even planning a Web site where AMD Fusion for Gaming Utility users can swap ideas on how to best customize their Fusion Utility buttons.

As you might suspect, the AMD Fusion for Gaming utility works only on AMD systems. The utility is a tangible, must-have piece of the future that’s all about delivering a better experience. Fellow AMD blogger Pat Moorhead has spent a considerable amount of time kicking the tires of the utility and has a full report of what he experienced