Having just announced three new additions to our mobility lineup today, it seems like a perfect opportunity to talk a little bit about the state of the Client (aka PC) market. It’s no secret it has been a tough couple of years for the PC and it’s a daily topic here at AMD. Regardless of the hype, when you take a closer look it’s clear that the PC industry isn’t going away, it’s evolving. And the research supports this: forecasts from major industry analyst firms for traditional notebook and desktop form factor sales are expected to decline, while new form factors like small form-factor touch notebooks, tablets, hybrid and convertible devices, and ultrathins showing anticipated growth.

So, what’s driven this change and what does it mean for AMD?

AMD’s APU and SoC strategies, plus HSA compatibility all combine to provide the best present-day user experience and enable the future of computing

For one, over the past decade or so, we’ve moved from a single device, productivity-focused, more x86 processing-is-better market, to one of people carrying multiple devices of different shapes and sizes where mobility and entertainment-oriented workloads reign supreme. Add to this a number of trends and user experiences, including touch technology, the always-on/always-connected lifestyle, social media and casual gaming, on-the-go content capture /creation /manipulation and sharing and you get a very different (evolved) Client market place.

In this new market, the processor architecture of decades-past alone just doesn’t cut it - while it may date me a little, to paraphrase the infamous words of one of my favorite Sci-Fi series of all time, “ [x86 alone] can’t do it, Captain! [It doesn’t] have the [processing] power!” And AMD is uniquely positioned to deliver exactly this across a variety of form factors.

Announced today, the Acer Aspire V5/V4-122 features an AMD A6 “Temash” APU and is the perfect mix of portability, gaming ability, battery life, performance, and value in a slim, light form factor with touch screen.

AMD predicted this shift when we had the vision to reinvent the processor – combining the parallel compute capabilities of the GPU and serial processing of the CPU onto a single chip – taking the first step toward enabling the experiences we’re seeing rise in popularity today and making the creation of the industry's first Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) possible. These new user experiences are exactly what our APUs are conceptualized around - interactive, energy efficient, graphics-intensive, and visual – and they need the seamless integration of the combined processing power of CPU and GPU that only AMD can deliver thanks to our extensive IP in both areas. Sure, our competition has APUs, and you’ll also notice that a larger percentage of their die is increasingly being dedicated to the GPU. But, they cannot deliver an equivalent level of experience. That is our edge. That's the AMD APU Advantage.

And, with our new mobility platforms and executing to our roadmaps, we’re perfectly poised to win in what we’re calling the convergence era of computing with power-sipping APUs that deliver a responsive, visually stunning and leading-class experience across a variety of form factors – from performance and media tablets, to hybrid and convertible devices, to entry-level small form-factor touch and premium ultrathin notebooks. Add to that our involvement with the Heterogeneous Systems Architecture (HSA) Foundation, where members are collectively working to build a standards-based heterogeneous compute ecosystem to create the next foundation in general purpose computing, as well as our expanded focus on the embedded and Semi-Custom markets that focuses on integrating AMD processors into devices like: gaming consoles, set-top boxes, smart TVs, and servers, and you’ll soon see a world powered by AMD APUs. And that’s a world I can’t wait to see.

Gabe Gravning is the Director of Client Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.