AMD Australia has spilled the beans on the company's plan for thinspiration: Intel won't be the only ultra computer in town! No—coming soon, we'll have AMD Ultrathins in addition to Intel Ultrabooks. Caveat: they might not be thin.
The Australian cites AMD's Brian Slattery, who detailed some of the format's specs:
Mr Slattery said AMD wasn't being as prescriptive in defining exactly what Ultrathins would look like and their configuration.
Instead it was producing chips with integrated Radeon graphics on the processor consistent with an Ultrathin form factor. The GPU would be Direct X compatible for enhanced video playback and gaming.
"[Companies] can do what they want with them," says Slattery. So on the one hand, that's nice, as mandated dimensions a la Intel might mean we avoid another torrent of MacBook Air clones. But on the other hand, there's nothing stopping companies from just sticking this chip in an otherwise idiotically designed chassis and calling it Ultrathin. Ultrabooks may be derivative as hell at the moment, but at least they're ripping off something nice from Apple: speed, a trim frame, no optical drive, and solid state storage. AMD makes spectacular processors, but it sounds like an Ultrathin, at least according to Slattery, needn't be any of these ultra-things. Will we see fat Ultrathins? We'll probably find out at CES, where this and other consumer paradoxes will be gently unwrapped. [Australian via Tom's Hardware]
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