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AMD to retire ATI branding
News in from AMD today confirms both rumors that I’ve been hearing, along with something that I’ve been expecting for a long time - that the company plans to get rid of the ATI branding on its graphics line.
The reasoning for this is two-fold. First, the AMD believes that dragging along two brands - the AMD brand and the ATI brand - is unnecessary since consumers it seems find the AMD brand stronger than the ATI brand. Personally, I find this a little odd since AMD when put alongside Intel is a little like a Lilliputian alongside Gulliver, but there you go, marketing knows best.
This change means new branding. Existing products on shelves won’t see a name change, but new products will be branded AMD Radeon and AMD FirePro.
The other reason behind this shedding of the ATI brand is new products. Specifically Fusion, which brings together a melding of CPU and GPU. The first of these products, codenamed Ontario, will feature two low-power “Bobcat” CPUs combined with a Radeon GPU. This is expected to ship later this year. The more powerful Llano which features a quad-core Phenom II with a GPU is on track for the first half of 2011.
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