The company will go with CPU families instead, like Intel

Jan 3, 2013 10:49 GMT  ·  By

Though the media has been keeping the public apprised of AMD's processor platforms, the company's actual advertising strategy differs from the way the news is told. We have just learned that AMD may change its branding scheme because of this and other reasons.

AMD markets its accelerated processing units under the Vision platform. It has done so for about three years, give or take a few weeks.

Vision stands for dual-core processor with integrated graphics, Vision Premium for low-power dual-cores with better graphics, Vision Ultimate for low-power high-end dual-core but separate graphics, and Vision Pro for high-end hardware.

Basically, AMD has been advertising whole computer setups rather than individual hardware parts.

Intel, in the meanwhile, has been promoting central processors by family (Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, Celeron, Pentium).

According to anonymous sources cited by SemiAccurate, AMD will drop the Vision branding once it launches the Richland, Kabini and Temash accelerated processing units.

Afterwards, it will promote them as FX (Vishera products), A10/A8/Athlon/Pro (for Richland products) and A6/A4/E2/E1 (for Kabini series).

That only leaves ultra-low power APUs like Temash, and those, too, will have a branding scheme of this sort.

AMD's motherboard and PC/notebook partners had a great say in this, as they felt that simple classification did not simplify choice.

The number of cores will also stop being so important this year, as AMD will have low-end quad-core Jaguar chips available for low-power laptops and tablets.

Finally, AMD has canceled the Kaveri high-end processor series, which means it won't have anything to offer as part of Vision Pro PCs.

As such, there won't be any Vision systems up for sale soon enough. People in need of a new notebook will have to take a good look at the specifications and, in the case of DIY desktops (do-it-yourself), buyers will need to make sure the individual hardware components go well together. It won't be much of an adjustment in the grand scheme of things, knowing that most people do this anyway.