DailyTech - Report: AMD to Kill Off "VISION" APU Branding

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Gadgets Report: AMD to Kill Off "VISION" APU Branding
Jason Mick (Blog) - December 31, 2012 12:39 PM

18 comment(s) - last by Taft12.. on Jan 3 at 3:49 PM

Marketing move would simplify brand names, but not everyone is happy

For two generations of accelerated processing units (APUs) -- Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.'s (AMD) CPU+GPU single die affordability/mobility-focused solution -- the word "VISION" has been tacked on to indicate that the chip is an APU. The branding first popped up in the Llano/Zacate/Ontario/Desna and continued with the second-gen Trinity/Brazos 2.0/Hondo designs.

SemiAccurate reports, though, that the VISION brand is about to be killed off (for now AMD's VISION brand homepage appears alive, but that could soon change).

The APUs will simply snip the designation -- for example "AMD VISION A10" will become "AMD A10". The site doesn't appear entirely happy with this change -- Leo Yim complains:

At the end, the move to the new branding doesn’t benefit the customers much, or help to make better purchase decisions. Besides the respective price points for different APU platforms, nothing substantial is achieved with this purely marketing decision.

But he acknowledges that the move does simplify things and doesn't have that big an impact ultimately.

_{AMD is rumored to be clipping the "VISION" brand name.}

AMD recently rolled out its Piledriver-core based FX series chips (code-name: Vishera). A mid-range Piledriver-based APU dubbed Richland is also expected to be incoming, based on roadmap leaks.

A new 28 nm low-power APU core (for the A6/A4/E2/E1 models) will land in mid-2013. Code-named Kabini, AMD has said that the power-efficient chip will pack a more-powerful DirectX 11.1-compatible GPU core. AMD is rumored to be relying primarily on ball-grid-array (BGA) designs for Kabini, nixing upgrade routes.

Source: SemiAccurate

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RE: No big deal IMO

By FaceMaster on 1/1/2013 9:13:12 AM , Rating: 2

Wow, that had nothing to do with the topic in question and sounds more like you bragging about your new laptop, along with stealth-bragging about how decent your old one still was.

What would be relevant is if, say, you didn't want to buy a geforce 6800 because it no longer has the 'fx' title that the 5000 series did. I can't actually think of any other examples at the moment. Maybe something to do with TWIMTBP?

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RE: No big deal IMO

By V-Money on 1/3/2013 1:01:57 PM , Rating: 3

Now that you mention it, I see your point. In all fairnss though I was replying specifically to nocturnes comments about the Phenom going through 3 name changes without it being a problem. More in line with the article I still can see how this applies because my newer laptop has an integrated GPU as well as the other one and that greatly increases battery life. If I were to say buy a laptop with an AMD CPU and a dedicated graphics card I would also like to have one with an integrated card. With the word "vision" in the title I wouldn't even have to think about it. You might not think that this is really important, but my old laptop was lucky to break the 2 hour mark in battery life

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