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.

Just got back from my first CES. Despite dire "end of the world" forecasts for CES, it struck me as very busy. I spent some time on the floor – it’s fortunate you can’t buy the stuff or I would be in real trouble.

For AMD, four things of note:

1. We launched our new "Dragon"platform technology for desktop PCs. It’s wicked fast and the sexiest way you can get it today is in the new Dell Alienware XPS 625. I hope to get my hands on one soon – I am starting to come to grips with Crysis (although I have to admit without "God mode" it would be very challenging.)

2. Our Yukon platform for ultrathin notebooks helped the HP Pavilion dv2 win Laptop Magazine Best of CES. If you can lust after a laptop, I lust after this. This is the system I need to travel with. It’s not available just yet though. There must be some around; who do I need to buy lunch for?

3. We also announced ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4000 Series graphics processors – feature-rich on-the-go visual computing with the latest Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 games support, a home theatre-quality HD multimedia experience, and energy-efficient features for a longer battery life.

4. Finally, we announced plans to create the "AMD Fusion Render Cloud" – this needs more space than I can give it here but at a high level it’s designed to be a massive supercomputer designed to process and electronically distribute HD material through the cloud. Our friends at OTOY are working with us on this new kind of supercomputer.

I will cover each of these over the next few weeks in more depth. I even shot some video on my flip camera – though long delays at the Las Vegas airport took away from my weekend editing time (as you know if you followed my Twitter feeds). But I will post again soon.

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.

There is an aspect to blogging that all bloggers have to get past. I am sure most writers get over this quickly; I must confess that until very recently, I found it a struggle. The problem is this: will anyone really give a "fetid dingo’s kidney" about what I write?

Well, I would like you all to know that I have gotten past this issue. Should you need proof, I hereby quote myself: as noted in a column late last year by CRN’s Damon Poeter, on predications for 2009, "this is the year where we will all finally agree: the speed of the processor is no longer the most significant factor in defining the experience of the user."

I bring this up because today we are demonstrating this point at two events here at CES.

First, my boss Dirk Meyer (AMD’s CEO) is giving a CES Industry Insider keynote at 11am PST at the Las Vegas Hilton (also the scene of my biggest ever craps win), and then this evening I’ll be hosting fellow bloggers at CntrStg at the Wynn.

At both events we will explain and demonstrate why the speed of the CPU alone is no longer enough to deliver the best experience to the end-user. Not that CPU speed is unimportant – we will show our new AMD Phenom™ II processor over-clocking to around 6-plus GHz at various events while at CES.¹ It is just that speed is now one of several crucial factors that – when taken together – yield superior end-user experiences.

Let me put it another way: I often ask people what their first consideration is when buying a new car. Very few say the engine (though many Germans and engineers do). For most people it depends on how they plan to use the car. Is it for taking the kids to school or for fun on the weekends? In this sense, people make a platform choice first. They then make a brand choice – perhaps American vs. foreign. And then at some point downstream in the decision-making process, they generally ask how powerful an engine they can afford.

PCs are pretty similar. Consumers ask themselves whether they need their PC to be mobile, or whether they need a notebook or a desktop. Only afterward do they consider the brand and price. And it is only later that they wonder how much processing power they can afford.

In 2009 I think consumers will ask a new question early on in the PC buying process: how important is the graphics experience? Do I need integrated or discrete graphics? How much of the ‘heavy lifting’ of the application can be done on the GPU?

In these tough economic times people are looking for the best deals – and graphics is becoming a bigger story. You mark my words!

1. AMD’s product warranty does not cover damages caused by over-clocking, even when over-clocking is enabled via AMD software.

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.