14 DAY TRIAL // Looks like Advanced Micro Devices is going for a change of image, or at least wants to change the image of its APUs (accelerated processing units).
Advanced Micro Devices has decided to completely drop the Fusion System Architecture brand, FSA for short.
That isn't to say that the Sunnyvale, California-based company is abandoning its product roadmap or changing it in any way.
This is purely a name change: instead of FSA, the outfit will be going with the Heterogeneous Systems Architecture (HAS) name from now on.
AMD will inaugurate HSA, in a way, on February 2, during the AMD Financial Analyst Day.
“FSA was the blueprint for AMD’s overarching design for utilizing CPU and GPU processor cores as a unified processing engine, which we are making into an open platform standard. This architecture enables many benefits, including high application performance and low power consumption,” says Phil Rogers.
“Our software partners are already taking advantage of the power and performance advantage of APU and GPU acceleration, with more than 200 accelerated applications shipped to date. […] Together with these software partners, we have built a heterogeneous compute ecosystem that is built on industry standards."
"As such, we believe it’s only fitting that the name of this evolving architecture and platform be representative of the entire, technical community that is leading the way in this very important area of technology and programing development.”
AMD's 'Fusion' name will persist until after the Fusion12 Developer Summit, a gathering scheduled for June, 2012, and which will take place in Bellevue, Washington.
The product roadmap has not suffered any changes that we know of, so the Trinity and all its successors are still in the pipeline.
Among other things, Advanced Micro Devices even intends to offer an alternative to Intel's Ultrabook platform, with price advantages of $100-$200 (78.5 to 157 EUR).