The main reason for the trip was to participate in the China launch of our VISION Technology from AMD retail merchandising approach. Held in Beijing, it was a great opportunity to extend the idea of VISION ― talking directly to the everyday consumer about daily usage (as opposed to the gadget geeks who want to talk about technology), and in one of the fastest-growing consumer markets in the world.

The China team customized the logo and as you can see they added some Chinese characters and as ever they used the language to help bring deeper meaning to the concept of VISION. Translated (they tell me) the symbols mean “see” and “feel”.

Looks (and sounds) good to me.

Following the launch and some customer meetings, we then headed to Shanghai. This was my first visit to the city and I have to say it’s somewhere that I could live. If Beijing is like Washington, D.C. then Shanghai is more like New York. We had a great dinner downtown in an “ex-pat” area but I was not tempted by the American steakhouse ― there are some things we just do better in Texas, and steak is one of them.

While in Shanghai we visited the Shanghai Supercomputer Center. Not only do they have one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, the Dawning 4000A based on the AMD Opteron™ processor, they have a very excellent museum ― although their “historical” section includes machines I have sold during my career (a sign of age, alas).

4 of the Top 5

Elsewhere in China they are using AMD GPUs to break new records, helping make four out of the top five most powerful supercomputers in the world ones based on AMD technology.

The Tianhe-1, which is the 5^th most powerful supercomputer in the world, is a very large cluster of 5120 ATI GPUs based on the RV770 architecture (the processor you will find in the higher-end ATI Radeon™ HD 4000 series of cards). Not only is this is the first petaflop GPU cluster, it is the first to break into the Top Ten list, as well as AMD’s first large-scale deployment employing ATI Stream Technology in technical applications.  The system also used Intel-based x86 CPUs – which proves that we design our technology to leverage open and interoperable standards.

For the tech-heads among you, the system should be around 563.1 TFLOPS on Linpack (60% from GPUs) and will have a peak performance of 1.2 PFLOPS (80% from GPUs). The cluster’s primary workload will consist of scientific applications such as oil and gas exploration.

I really think this in an interesting example of how “balanced systems” – by which I mean those which combine CPUs and GPUs – are becoming a mainstream solution. Moreover, additional power comes from adding more GPUs and not CPUs. Something gamers already have learned.

By the way, the name “Tianhe” literally means “galaxy” (actually translates to “river in sky”), which is pretty much where the limit is for this next generation of supercomputers.

 Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

This year, Supercomputing ’09 (SC09), adopted a noble theme: “Computing for a Changing World.” I agree it’s important to look at the ways computing can help solve the world’s problems. But it’s equally critical to look at how technology itself is changing the world.

Case in point: former Vice President Al Gore is delivering today’s SC09 keynote. It is interesting to note that despite his Nobel prize-winning efforts, only now are we starting to really harness the power of computers to take a proactive approach to environmental change. Thanks to computers, we’re better able to detect crises before they happen, predict patterns more effectively and tackle ever-more daunting mathematical equations.

Of course, these aren’t your everyday computers. These are supercomputers. Supercomputers that can do climate modeling, weather forecasting, supernova research and measure wind patterns and atmospheric turbulence.

Wow.

Supercomputer’s like the Number 1 rated Cray’s XT5 “Jaguar” system have almost 200,000 processing cores, all harnessed to address the most challenging scientific problems on earth. And, when those cores are put to the test they don’t just help answer the questions we’ve had for years, they lend themselves to new questions. They open new doors. They incite change.

Of course AMD can’t claim all of the credit for these modern miracles. Computing ― and change ― on a scale this big includes multiple organizations, corporations and individuals. In fact, AMD is part of the Alliance for Climate Protection’s “Repower America” campaign, which is chaired by Gore. Banding together through technology and old-fashioned grass roots action we can not only react ― we can act.  

If you want to get involved, go here.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

Rejoice! 

Today AMD is excited about Adobe’s release of a beta Adobe Flash Player 10.1 browser runtime supporting VISION Technology from AMD, providing truly outstanding video playback quality on Flash-based H.264 video.  Adobe and AMD have been working closely together to optimize video playback performance of Flash Player 10.1 by taking advantage of hardware acceleration on Windows-based PCs built with AMD technology supporting ATI Stream technology.

Through the integration of AMD and Adobe’s technologies, you can expect to enjoy improved video playback performance which is designed to extend notebook battery life, and reduce CPU utilization ― meaning that the GPU is doing more of the work, which frees up the CPU for other tasks. In our labs when viewing HD video, we’ve seen CPU usage drop by as much as 30% – and that’s nothing to sneeze at!

As one of the world’s most pervasive multimedia platforms, Adobe Flash is an obvious platform to work with and we are excited to see the fruits of our labor come to you.

Flash Player 10.1 beta is available for users and developers to download now and you can actually see the impact of GPU acceleration here. Make sure you have the latest driver to enjoy the full Flash Player 10.1 experience. Go ahead and take a look and why not let us know your thoughts ― we would love to hear what you think and how you plan on using it.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

I’m excited that this gives us the opportunity to provide the feature rich graphics that help push the boundaries of gaming and visual computing to a whole new consumer base ― and one known for being fanatical about good design and top performance.  I’m even more excited that we’re delivering on both fronts.

This got me thinking about what graphics mean in consumer computing today ― for gamers, or otherwise ― whether you’re a ‘Mac’ or a ‘PC’. As you know, there’s much discussion and debate about which platform is better, but ultimately most consumers want the same thing when it comes to their computer – a great visual experience, regardless of the platform or operating system.

Whether it’s immersive, interactive gaming like BioShock or basic video editing, consumers, on any platform, are interested more and more in a whole host of activities that require superior graphics. But I’m not suggesting that variety and choice are not important to consumers. In fact, the opposite is true.

I believe the world is big enough for those of us that are PCs and those of us that are Macs. I happen to be both, and I’m not alone in using either platform depending on what I’m doing.

At AMD we are dedicated to delivering the best computing and graphics experience possible, and that means not only producing the hardware to bring visual graphics to life, but also providing consumers with choice and flexibility to fit their lifestyle, wants and needs.

And we are now one step closer to realizing that goal.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

The ‘big news’ is that we are now completing  AMD’s transformation from a manufacturing company to a truly fabless design, product, marketing and sales company. Our Asset Smart story has ended; and the ending is a happy one for us, our shareholders, our partners, our customers and consumers everywhere.

What has also happened is that we and Intel have agreed to do is to stop looking backwards and start looking forward. To chart a new path for the relationship between the two companies after having settled all of our outstanding antitrust and patent cross license disputes (see bottom of this blog for specifics). Notably, the agreement requires us both to be open and transparent about what business practices are prohibited.  In essence, the settlement agreement – which is available in full – sets forth clear  ground rules for an open, competitive microprocessor market that will benefit consumers around the world. Watch for the SEC filing for more details. Paraphrasing President Reagan, there will be ample opportunity for “trust and verification”.

Given the press and analyst meetings I have almost every day. So what does this mean to me and us.

• No more debate about our cross-license agreement with Intel and its possible impact on GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ ability to manufacture our products (or anyone else’s for that matter).
• An end in sight for those who may be understandably confused by the current AMD ‘The Product Company’ and AMD ‘The Consolidated Company’ financial reporting structure.
• No more questions about AMD’s management focus, litigation spend, or long term future as a semiconductor innovation leader.

I could go on, but you get the point.

So many of the “yes, but …” questions we face all the time just met with a burial at deep sea. What we are left with is competition based on strategy, design, marketing, sales and execution.

A level playing field; a fair fight. That’s all we ever wanted. That’s what we fought for. That’s our future.

A future, by the way, which is all about Fusion.

Business Practices Provisions Prohibit Intel From:

• Offering inducements to customers in exchange for their agreement to buy all of their microprocessor needs from Intel, whether on a geographic, market segment, or any other basis  (Section 2.1.1.a)

• Offering inducements to customers in exchange for their agreement to limit or delay their purchase of microprocessors from AMD, whether on a geographic, market segment, or any other basis (Section 2.1.1.b)

• Offering inducements to customers in exchange for their agreement to limit their engagement with AMD or their promotion or distribution of products containing AMD microprocessors, whether on a geographic, channel, market segment, or any other basis (Section 2.1.2a-b)

• Offering inducements to customers in exchange for their agreement to abstain from or delay their participation in AMD product launches, announcements, advertising, or other promotional activities (Section 2.1.2.b)

• Offering inducements to customers or others to delay or forebear in the development or release of computer systems or platforms containing AMD microprocessors, whether on a geographic, market segment, or any other basis (Section 2.2.2 and 2.1.2)

• Offering inducements to retailers or distributors to limit or delay their purchase or distribution of computer systems or platforms containing AMD microprocessors, whether on a geographic, market segment, or any other basis (Section 2.2.1)

• Withholding any benefit or threatening retaliation against anyone for their refusal to enter into a prohibited arrangement such as the ones listed above.

For those of you who do, tomorrow, November 11 you can watch as we discuss what the industry can expect from AMD at our annual Financial Analyst Day.  Whether you are a confirmed AMD follower or someone who is new to us, this is the event to watch to learn about all things AMD and what we’re doing (and plan to do) to deliver innovation to the market.

I’ll be discussing what markets we plan to put our efforts toward in 2010, and previewing some upcoming marketing campaigns, while Rick Bergman will take a deep dive into our product and platform roadmaps, Emilio Ghilardi will review our customer momentum, and Chekib Akrout will share details about our future technology roadmap ― including plans for our next-generation CPU cores and APU development strategy.  You will also hear from our new Chief Financial Officer, Thomas Seifert, and our CEO Dirk Meyer. 

You can watch the Webcast starting at 8:30 a.m. PT.  As always, please let me know what you think.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

Unfortunately, the same basic assumption about the “waterfall” effect has plagued the PC world.

For years, the conventional wisdom has been to load high-end features in the business PC, with everyday consumers eventually benefitting from those features when they became “commoditized”. You’ll recall the conversations along the lines of, “No one buys an Apple computer because you can’t run the same software on them that you run at work.” Other than for high-end gamers, the convention wisdom has been that consumers need only low- powered, low-end machines.

Clearly, the world has changed.

Video, music, pictures and other “blobs” (binary large objects) have changed the requirements for consumer PCs. Today everyday users expect superior graphics, powerful hard-drives, more memory and sometimes even faster processors than many business users. Running primarily Microsoft Office, Excel and Internet Explorer, on the other hand, has rendered business users the ones needing only lower-capability machines.

Yet, the typical business user’s workload requirement is in stark contrast to the amount that businesses generally pay for the machines their employees use. I am willing to bet that if you are reading this at work, the PC you are using costs as much as double the average PC in your local retailer ― and is likely significantly less powerful. IT departments tell you that they pay for other things like maintenance and warranties, software and support, all things you might not get on your store bought PC. And business PCs can sometimes be loaded with features that IT buys for insurance but are never used.

Many business users don’t like their work PCs because they are heavy and don’t compete with more compelling looking consumer PCs. You have to give Apple credit for a massive rethinking of PC industrial design. The PC is now a mainstream fashion and status statement (with some exceptions of course). Dell has colorful tops; HP offers sharp design.

But this is an evolving landscape. The expectations for and cost of retail PCs is going to change the way businesses think. At a Gartner conference last month I learned the name for this phenomenon: “consumerization”.

To quote a recent report from Gartner*: “The consumerization of IT focuses on how enterprises will be affected by and can take advantage of new technologies and models that originate and develop in the consumer space, rather than in the enterprise IT sector.”

Over the next few years we will likely see more and more effects from consumerization that will go beyond design to the software, networking and all other elements of our experience. Personally, I travel with an HP DV2 and would like to move to the new HP DM3. It’s great for work, and it plays music, video and other blobs.

I think I may have already been consumerized.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

 *source: Gartner, Inc. “Key Issues for the Consumerization of IT, 2009″, February 3, 2009

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

The AMD engineering team has posted our ATI Stream SDK v2.0 for OpenCL 1.0.  Now you can have the ability to tap into the full processing performance available from multi-core CPUs and GPUs at the same time, using an industry standard language.  Write it once, use the OpenCL compiler of choice from the different hardware vendors, and you are now running your app across different platforms.  (Notice we’re not stuck on the single vendor, GPU or CPU-only path favored by others in our industry.) 

I’m not the only one who sees the potential of open standards in this arena.  Many of our technology partners do as well.  Listen to David McAllister, director of open source and standards at Adobe:

“Adobe is a strong believer in industry standards; they allow developers to focus on innovation instead of platform support,” said David McAllister, director Open Source and Standards, Adobe.   “The ATI Stream SDK with OpenCL is a solid implementation of a strong standard.”

And Corel:

“Corel plans to integrate OpenCL into our digital media products and we believe it will offer significant benefits to Corel, our customers and partners,” said Jeremy Liang, senior vice president of Digital Media Development, Corel.  “With this new open standard, AMD will be providing drivers to take advantage of the latest CPU and GPU features which we anticipate will improve the overall performance of our digital media applications running on AMD platforms, while simultaneously reducing our development efforts in this area.”

As an industry insider, it’s obvious that the GPU (working together with the CPU) is the next frontier to help dramatically increase the performance of PC and server platforms, especially for some of the most popular applications.   The YouTube and iPhone generation have made distribution and consumption of high definition media pervasive.   Everyone’s a producer and consumer of moving and still images, distributing their content to their spheres of influence worldwide over the Internet, and over the home network.  With OpenCL, now we have an industry standard to accelerate those applications and make them easier and faster to use.

Don’t take my word for it; you can see HP and AMD’s director of ATI Stream technology, Patti Harrell, talk more about how OpenCL influences this trend here. 

My colleague, Simon Solotko, has an excellent companion blog that gives another perspective on the relationship between, OpenCL, AMD’s traditional support for industry standards, and the new ATI Stream SDK v 2.0. 

So, please help us all.  Take up the challenge and do something great with OpenCL.  Grab the ATI Stream SDK v2.0 and leverage the power of AMD CPUs and GPUs working together to accelerate your vision.

 Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

·         Integrate technology to do new things

·         Collaborate intimately with our customers and business partners to help solve their problems

·         Impact the market

I want to dissect that second bullet about customer and business partner intimacy. A lot of companies say they embrace it, but what does it really mean? I actually like the Wikipedia definition of customer intimacy  and about how it creates a virtuous circle: the better the supplier knows the customer’s objectives and difficulties, the better able the supplier is to provide a customized solution. The more adapted the supplier’s product or service is, the happier the customer will be, and the stronger the bond is between the two parties.

AMD’s latest bonding effort comes in the form of the AMD Fusion Partner Program, launched today.  At its core, the new program is about simplification. We are making it simpler to be one of AMD’s channel partners. We are simplifying channel partners groups and benefits. We are making it easier for our partners to offer AMD-on-AMD-on-AMD systems.   The specifics of the new program are outlined by David Kenyon here in AMD’s worldwide channel blog.

By making it simpler for our channel partners to do business with us, we’re hoping to create closer, more effective business relationships with them.   We want to work with our channel partners to better understand their customers’ needs.  And by creating this level of closeness and simplifying the way we do business, we’re enabling our channel partners to form closer bonds with their customers.

Because around AMD, you won’t ever hear the phrase “Don’t take it personally – It’s just business.” For us, when it comes to our customers and our channel partners, business is personal.  

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

As I mused on the subject of Twitter, two thoughts crossed my mind (not a long journey). This collision of particles in a near perfect vacuum was created by something I saw on CNBC and something I read online.

Thought 1: Twitter is the Krispy Kreme of new media

I used to joke that when it came to Krispy Kreme donuts, there were only two types of people in the world: those who loved them and those who had yet to try one. The same can be said about Twitter.

Last Friday on CNBC the hosts of the morning show were making fun of one of their own team for using Twitter. It was the standard rubbish about “Don’t you just tell everyone you just ate a hamburger?”

It’s always ironic to me when a media outlet misses the point about a tool like Twitter. I suspect that the Executive Producers at CNBC could talk for a long time about who their audience consists of and what that audience is interested in seeing and hearing on TV. I would argue the same is true about most Twitter users.

Most of us are really clear about who we are talking to, and if those people were not on Twitter we wouldn’t use the tool. For me, Twitter gives me the ability to talk to AMD’s main target market, those people who we call our “processor-aware” audience. This audience includes analysts, investors, journalists, customers and enthusiasts, and a majority of these key people are on Twitter. If you want to know if the same if true for you, go to www.twellow.com and put in the name of your biggest customer – you may be surprised by what you see.

Of course there are people on Twitter who just talk about what they had for dinner and what the weather is like – and they enjoy it. Good luck to them. Who are we to say that’s a wrong use of the tool?

Thought 2: You should panic when bureaucrats and politicians get it before you do.

Federal Computer Week recently reported that The White House is ranked the #1 government agency on Twitter with more than a million followers, followed by CDC Emergency with more than 800,000.* There are 168 registered accounts tweeting from the Executive Branch and 33 accounts tweeting from the US Senate (that’s a third of them). The Senate seems to win over the other lot with only 118 accounts tweeting from the US House of Representatives (that’s 27%).  I also found this stat particularly interesting: 66% of the 2.74 million members of the military use social media.

All those numbers underscore my point: If you want to communicate your point of view then Twitter is a great way to talk to people who are interested in what you have to say. People who don’t care will continue not to.

For those risk-averse businesses out there that have shied away from adopting social media, let me I point you back to the military social media adoption stat. I’ve never heard of losing a war because of a Facebook entry. So if your company is sitting on the social media sidelines, my suggestion is to stop panicking, trust your teams and empower them to use these new tools to reach your key audiences and advance your goals.

For the record, I love Dunkin’ Donuts too…

*Top 10 agencies on Twitter, FCW lists the top 10 most popular tweeters

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

What I also get is – it’s about so much more than playing games.

The “more” is around something called DirectCompute. In many ways it’s the feature that my favorite applications are going to benefit from more than any other so I thought it would be worth spending a blog on.

DirectCompute is a component of the DirectX11 API to be released with Windows 7. It is fundamentally designed to enable GPU compute and enables applications to take advantage of the massively parallel computing power of the GPU.

What does DirectCompute mean for users? Simple: you have two great processors in your PC – one CPU and one GPU. And your system can use both to solve problems. For some workloads, like GPU-accelerated video transcoding and rendering, this combination can really speed up your throughput.

So as you begin compiling your holiday wish list, keep your eye out for systems with this astounding GPU compute capability. But here’s my caveat emptor. When you look at specifications of GPUs, it is important to note there are different levels of support provided for DirectCompute.

One level, which AMD terms DirectCompute 10, runs on the legacy path of the DirectX 11 API to support previous generation of DirectX 10/10.1 GPUs. If offered a system with this feature, just say no.  You should demand what we at AMD call Direct Compute 11. This is the only version designed to unlock the full feature set of DirectX 11 and, as I mentioned previously, the only architecture that is fundamentally designed to enable GPU compute. 

For developers, DirectCompute 11 represents a paradigm shift for GPU compute development. It will now be much more straightforward for developers to code using this architecture. No longer will they have to do contortions and jump through hoops to code what they want to. DirectCompute enables new algorithms that were not possible previously. Some examples of these advanced techniques are order independent transparency, ray tracing, better shadows, and depths of field. If you are interested in more details, you can read this white paper. DirectCompute is a de-facto  industry standard for developers of GPU-compute applications and as such, it should not be confused with  proprietary APIs  (and by “proprietary” I mean supported by only one supplier’s hardware).  

These are some of the reasons why at AMD, we are excited about the ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 Series graphics products. It’s not only the first and only GPUs in the market with full DirectX 11 support it is the only one to unlock the full feature set of Windows 7 and DirectCompute 11.We are proud of this technology leadership. We believe this industry standard will accelerate industry adoption of GPU compute applications running on Windows7 and add a new dimension to the end user’s computing experience.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

Let’s take today’s news from EU about the Intel ruling. Watching Intel’s PR people respond is like a scene from Life of Brian. With all due respect to the movie, I offer you my hypothetical version as it played out in the press today.

Intel: The Commission consistently construed ambiguous documents in a manner adverse to Intel.

Interviewer: What about the emails from Intel employees?

Intel: Yes but ignoring those, they have no clear evidence.

Interviewer: What about the email from PC manufacturers’ employees?

Intel: Well, we’re ignoring those too.

Interviewer: And the retailers?

Intel: We don’t listen to retailers.

Interviewer: And all the memos?

Intel: Yes but besides the emails from us and the PC manufacturers, evidence from retailers and the memos they have, there’s really no support whatsoever for their side of this case.

Interviewer: What about the secret conversations?

Intel: Secret conversations! What else you got?

Interviewer: And what about the two previous findings against Intel in Japan and Korea?

Intel: Now listen clearly. If you ignore the emails, evidence from retailers, memos, secret conversations and the findings from a majority of the civilized world, I think we can all agree their evidence is “insufficiently clear”.

Can I play the John Cleese part?

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

Sometimes, that means doing the complete opposite of the conventional approach. And today, we believe it’s time for some unconventional thinking.

The truth is that little has changed in the way x86 processors are marketed since AMD introduced 64 bits and multi-core processors. Even then the marketing, while it was new and creative, was another way of saying, “faster, better and more.”  It didn’t fundamentally change the way the industry talked about its products.

And today, in the mobile or notebook world the key issue for consumer is not the processor (or even the speed of the processor), but rather the combination of parts – or the “platform” as we call it – that make up the machine. There are of course customers who still want the processor which has the fastest “0-60 mph” speed, but we believe most mainstream consumers are more interested in how they are going to use the system, not necessarily how fast it is.

One of the reasons for this disconnect is that the “0-60 mph” speed metrics are derived through benchmarks like SysMark07. I have used this blog to talk about how a benchmark like MM07 on its own does not reflect typical battery usage (i.e. they don’t tell the “whole story”), and SysMark07 has the same limitation with workloads.  I will leave it to other people to detail why this benchmark is inadequate for most users, but I will point out that the software the benchmark uses has virtually nothing to do with videos, music or helping your manage your photos. Also, it doesn’t run Windows 7.

The Consumer PC Buying Experience Today

For the typical consumer considering a notebook purchase, the first question is typically a usage question, maybe followed by a size and weight consideration. In testing we did, not once did the shopper ask for a processor brand as primary consideration. What mainstream consumers want is machines on which to do office work, to watch movies, to listen to music, to edit their photos and even edit their videos.

While processor speed has an effect on how quickly some of these types of workloads can be done, other parts of the platform – elements like the graphics cards, the size of the screen and the reality of how long the battery will really last – can be just as important.

If we are going to help the consumer get the right machine for them, we really need to market to them in a way that makes sense. We started that a few months ago by beginning an industry conversation around battery life. Today we want to take that to the next level.

A New VISION

Today we introduce a whole new way to help consumers buy the right machine for their needs. Today AMD is introducing a new approach in retail we call VISION Technology from AMD.

Other  blogs will give you all the details about what this represents in terms of the brand and the technology – the platform. In particular, check out Pat Moorhead’s blog on our new ultrathin mainstream notebook platform  or Ian McNaughton’s blog on how Microsoft Windows 7 and DirectX 11 are also going to enhance users’ computing experiences. And for a simple guide you can check this website www.amd.com/whichvision.

In its simplest form we are connecting the needs of the consumer to the PC – not the processor. When you go into a retail store this holiday you will see VISION Basic, VISION Premium and VISION Ultimate on many PCs powered by AMD technology – not the name of our processor. Straightforward guides for retailers and consumers will help them know which VISION is right for them.

• VISION – Basic is for people who use productivity tools like Microsoft® Office and who surf the web, maybe listen to music and look at their photos
• VISION – Premium is for those who also want to watch High-definition and Blu-rays, edit photos and play some games
• VISION – Ultimate is for the video editor and 3D game player

We are also going to enable a VISION – Black edition for our technology partners who build the high-end, top of the line systems.

There is a lot more to VISION than I can capture in one blog – I am sure I will be doing others.

Just in case you were worrying, VISION Technology from AMD will extend to desktops early next year and your retailers will be able to tell you what parts went into your VISION system (it will be on the fact tags).

In the end it is about getting you the right machine for your needs because it’s about making your vision a reality.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

At AMD we take our pledges to our stakeholders seriously, and this includes our constant focus on being a good corporate citizen. 

Earlier this year I blogged about some of the ways AMDers all over the globe are helping make good on that pledge.  Today, AMD released two reports that provide additional detail about our ongoing efforts to minimize our corporate footprint.  Better yet, they show concrete movement against our benchmarks.    

The 2008 Corporate Responsibility Report provides detail on our efforts in support of environmental protection, corporate governance and social responsibility. The Global Climate Protection Plan, meanwhile, outlines AMD’s strategy and goals for global climate protection and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition to receiving a Climate Protection Award from the EPA and achieving LEED Gold certification for our Austin, Texas “Lone Star” campus, AMD is also on track to achieve our EPA Climate Leaders goal of reducing normalized emissions by 33 percent by the end of 2010.

We’ve also made great progress in enhancing the communities where AMD does business with efforts like the Green Power Group California Affiliates or the AMD North American Go Green commuter program that eliminated an estimated 1,027,000 miles of driving, conserved approximately 50,000 gallons of gasoline and avoided approximately 430,000 kg of CO2 equivalent emissions in 2008.

And as a global company, our efforts are worldwide. 

Programs implemented at AMD’s Suzhou facilities, for example, have reduced power consumption by approximately 4,655 Megawatt-hours (MWH), enough energy to power more than 2,000 Chinese households for a year based on a projected average annual energy consumption of approximately 1,800 kWh per household.  Similar efforts at AMD’s Markham, Ontario data center replaced 1,152 servers with 312 servers using new energy efficient Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processors, resulting in calculated annual energy savings of more than 1,750 MWH.

I encourage you to bookmark AMD’s corporate responsibility page for updates or stop by our page on social responsibility networking site JustMeans.com to share your opinion or engage in conversations in a place where business and social responsibility meet.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

For some broad thoughts on AMD’s approach to marketing, particularly social media and other cost-effective ways (say, a blog!) to reach our audiences, please take a moment and read this Q&A that B2B Magazine was kind enough to publish online as their “CMO Close Up.”  While their audience tends to be marketing types like me, your response to the Q&A would be a great check for me on whether you agree we’re being smart about reaching, well, you.

I look forward to reading your comments.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

From a sampling of almost 1,700 PCMag digital subscribers, they asked netbook buyers whether they would instead consider purchasing an ultra-thin laptop, which has a bigger screen, faster processor and larger keyboard but costs on average $200 – $400 more. Only about a third of those asked said they would still by a netbook.

So, what do we learn from this?

I think it’s fair to takeaway that price is driving the growth of the ultra-thin vs. the netbook segment, with those willing to pay for it getting more for their money in the form of an ultra-thin notebook, and those unwilling to getting a netbook’s more limited functionality instead.  Of the 66 percent of the respondents who either weren’t sure or who outright would consider an ultra-thin system, we think something like the HP dv2 and its bigger form factor is worth a look.

But it gets more interesting when considering the data plans that are increasingly associated with netbooks, with BusinessWeek pointing out earlier this year that the total cost of ownership over two years for an otherwise discounted netbook could reach $1,440.  That doesn’t include the price ― discounted, but still ― of the device.  So now we’re talking more than $1,600. 

For a netbook.

Is that real computing at a realistic price?

The truth is that most mainstream users actually don’t really care what processor is in their PC.  This isn’t the case for the performance-centric enthusiast, but they make up a very small part of the market. The rest of us care primarily about the user experience, what the system is going to deliver on a daily basis in real-world use scenarios.

Taken together, the PCMag survey data and the BusinessWeek article should be food for thought for anyone in the market for a reasonably-priced new mobile system.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied

Suffice to say, it’s a lot of processors.

It seems very appropriate that this milestone is arriving during our year-long 40^th Anniversary Celebration, providing yet another indicator of AMD’s indelible impact on our industry, and on consumers the world over.

Back in April, I posted about our 40^th Anniversary and how, from our point of view, 40 really is the new 20.  We see our anniversary as a great time to recognize both AMD’s successes and our transition to a new focus on designing the next generation of CPUs and GPUs. 

Our “ruby” anniversary is also an opportunity to have some fun and give back to the fans that have supported us over the decades through a series of contests.  Our first contest closed in June and the exceptionally creative winning entries can be found on our Flickr and YouTube channels. When we challenged the community to develop creative ways to celebrate the anniversary, we knew you’d come through, but we never thought people would go this far!  Well done everyone!

And now, onto contest number two! 

This time, we’re giving away four HP Pavilion DV2z notebooks throughout August and September. For a chance to win, just follow us on Twitter (@AMD_Unprocessed) and starting today, a new question about general AMD trivia will be tweeted every other Monday.  Eligible respondents* who reply via Direct Message with the correct answer will be automatically entered for a chance to win one of these feature laden laptops.

Not bad, eh? Check out the anniversary page for more details!

Good luck!

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

* Eligibility: Residents of United States and Canada (excluding Quebec), age 18 or over. One (1) entry per person per entry period. See complete OFFICIAL RULES for additional details. Official rules may be obtained on the Facebook AMD Unprocessed page.  Additional restrictions may apply.  Void where prohibited.

A thank you as well to Camilla Webster; she is the Forbes editor who conducted the interview.  Camilla clearly spent time researching AMD and that paid off in terms of insightful questions that helped drive a solid interview.  Good answer are often possible when asked good questions.

Enjoy.  Please let me know what you think.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

As an industry, we need to accept that he makes some good points.

While in raw, classic benchmark terms, we continue to deliver great leaps in performance, I suspect the Facebook IT and programming model doesn’t look like “classic benchmarks”.  It’s probably more PHP and Java than C++.

Oh dear, I hear the cry go up, we are about to talk about the problem of benchmarking, and synthetic benchmarks at that.

Let’s face it: synthetic benchmarks are essentially a useful evil. Everyone wants to know how a certain technology performs against a standardized test, but what happens when that test bares no real resemblance to the real work people do?  You get a huge disconnect.  

And this spans everything from notebook battery life to the debate of ACP vs. TDP in servers.

For hyperscale data center customers ― customers who build massive server farms that typically power cloud environments — when a benchmark is a tiny bit off compared to real world implementations, it can get magnified, a lot.  

I propose that what the industry needs is flexibility:  different tests for different kinds of usage models, and this is something we definitely “get” – but maybe have been too slow to deliver on.

 We also need servers that deliver efficient performance, not only raw performance.

This is exactly why we introduced the Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ EE processor – a fully featured processor at 40W ACP.  And, it’s exactly why I’m excited we are introducing the Six-Core AMD Opteron HE processor this week.  For more on that, please read Andy Parma’s blog that looks at the performance advantages of this new processor.

This continues our tradition of bringing highly efficient, power-optimized solutions to market to meet the demands of customers small and large – from small businesses to massive server farms.

In the future we plan to focus much more on smart processors that meet varying needs depending on what applications our customers run. But we can’t do this alone – we need to work with our ecosystem partners, both OEMs and ISVs, to make sure all the necessary parts are working together.

Taking it a step further, we want to build tests that help our customers anticipate the performance and efficiency gains you’ll see from our processors. Real world tests.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

That was back in December. Today, we’re looking at a slightly different landscape for the memory market. While DDR3 hasn’t reached total price parity with DDR2 yet, we have seen a significant drop in price. So much so that now the price premium for DDR3 can be less than 10 percent.

Over these past six months, AMD has brought to market a number of products to take advantage of the greater memory bandwidth of DDR3. To name a few:

- AMD Phenom™ II Black Edition processor provides maximum control

- Wide variety of AMD technology-based motherboards that support DDR3 (from Asus, Gigabyte among others)

- AMD OverDrive™ 3.0 software features the new DDR3 SmartProfile for optimal performance tuning*

Additionally, the design compatibility of the new AMD Phenom II and AMD Athlon™ II processors allows users to easily upgrade systems across AM2+ and AM3 infrastructures. That means these processors are equally compatible with either DDR2 or DDR3 memory, allowing users to choose if and when they wish to upgrade.

The bottom line: we’re providing customers with a choice. 

We now have a full line of AMD products on the table. And, at today’s price points, the cutting edge no longer needs to be bleeding.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

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

Similarly, netbooks may look like notebooks, but ― as we’ve previously pointed out ― they’re not the same.

NPD released a survey last week finding that 60% of consumers who purchased a netbook thought it would have the same performance as a notebook. Additionally, out of the 18-24 year old demographic – a major segment for netbooks – an astounding 65% said they bought their netbooks expecting better performance.

It’s no wonder that some netbook resellers saw a 30% return rate, as reported by Brooke Crothers at CNET.

Clearly, there is confusion in the market over the functionality of a netbook. And I don’t blame the consumer.

So what do we do? BusinessWeek’s Olga Kharif wrote a call to action for PC makers and retailers to better explain the difference in netbooks’ and notebooks’ capabilities. Speaking from personal experience, she writes, “I loved using [my netbook] to quickly check Hotmail or to watch a video off of YouTube. But try multitasking, such as downloading a photo or a document while streaming a video off of YouTube, and their performance falls off the cliff. Consumers need to be made aware of this before they make their purchases.” 

In some cases, consumers may even encounter problems during normal Web surfing. Many Websites now have video or flash right on their homepage. If you’re a parent buying a netbook for your kid, try loading Disney.com.

As with battery life, we think the PC industry has a role in helping consumers make educated decisions. In fact, Best Buy calls out on their Website that, “Netbooks may look like laptops, but they don’t have the full capabilities of a computer.”

What I also find interesting about the NPD survey is that the percentage of consumers who bought a netbook expecting the performance of a notebook closely parallels the percentage of netbooks that never leave the home (60% according to NPD). To me, this signifies that there is an opportunity in the market for a higher-performance product that is inexpensive and lightweight, satisfying consumers’ desire for a small, powerful machine while not disappointing on performance.

Of course, AMD’s response is the “ultrathin” category. If you’re looking for a lightweight, sleek laptop that is still powerful enough to handle your day to day activities, we recommend you check out the HP Pavilion dv2, powered by the AMD Athlon™ Neo processor for ultrathin notebooks. 

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

Last week we posted on our developer site a pre-release version of the x86 Open64 Compiler Suite.  Targeted at high performance and parallel computing workloads, this suite is derived from the Open64 suite of compiler development tools. The compiler is a valuable new open source alternative for C, C++, and FORTRAN developers.

Calling All Developers! 

Open64 currently supports the IA64, x86, CUDA and MIPS architectures.  AMD has extended and productized Open64 with optimizations designed for x86 multi-core processor advancements and multi-threaded code development. With this Open64 suite, AMD is introducing a quality code generation tool designed for high-performance parallel computing workloads so that developers can use this tool to bring additional levels of optimization to their code and take full advantage of AMD’s Open64 architecture.

The x86 Open64 Compiler Suite also extends AMD’s active participation in key open source software projects like Linux, Xen, X.org, KVM and GNU Compiler Collection GCC.  This compliments AMD’s contributions and efforts with GCC, PathScale, PGI, Sun Studio, and other compilers in providing developers a variety of options for software development on the Linux operating system.

So why does AMD optimize our own Open64 complier as opposed to just increasing our efforts with GCC?

AMD’s support of the Open64 compiler project is intended to provide users with the choice of an open source compiler that has optimizations that specifically target AMD64 technology and both of Intel’s 64-bit architectures. The reality is that the x86 Open64 environment represents more of a system-specific compiler for building and optimizing C, C++, and Fortran applications that target 32-bit and 64-bit Linux platforms. We have always strongly supported and actively contributed to the GCC community, and we view the GCC as the default compiler for Linux systems both in the near term and the foreseeable future.

People ask:  Is there a Windows® version of the Open64 compiler? At this time the Open64 compiler does not offer support for Windows. However, we work closely with Microsoft to drive optimizations into the Microsoft Visual Studio developer toolkit, which is used by the majority of Windows developers and with tools vendors like PGI and Absoft who offer Fortran-based compilers for Windows developers.

Source code, documentation and support information for the x86 Open64 Compiler Suite can be found at AMD Developer Central.

Happy coding!

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

I want to set the record straight: here is what happened. 

At D7 this year I saw the presentation by playwright and activist Eve Ensler on the issue of “rape-free products.”  I have to admit that before that I was ignorant of the violence taking place in the DRC. You can learn more about what she said here.

At about the same time, others who were educated about this violence started to make the (again, unintended) connection between our product code name (which are meant to be internal but have a way of becoming public) and the tragedy in the DRC, and this made it into some blogs.  This was happening as the team was in the process of formally transitioning from the code name to the more formal product name (in the same way, “Yukon” became our “1^st Generation Ultrathin Platform”), so we were already referring to the product as our “2^nd Generation Ultrathin Platform.”

Two conclusions:

1.       Anything that gives awareness to this issue is a good thing.

2.       We get to make the point that we are introducing our 2^nd generation product while others are still on their first.

Given these two things we were happy to expedite the transition that was already in place.

For more on Eve Ensler’s work visit her site.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.