SemiAccurate reports that Apple was allegedly working with AMD to use their Fusion Llano chips for the latest iteration of the Macbook Air. It’s an interesting allegation that merits some discussion. But, what if?
First, when the Macbook Air came out with a Core 2 Duo and NVidia Ion combo in 2010, instead of the first-generation Intel Core i3/i5 series, it was an indication that Apple wanted more GPU power that it was willing to sacrifice some CPU cycles for it.
When the mid-2011 variants of the Macbook Air came out, it ran on the IntelSandy Bridge platform running Core i5 and Core i7 chips.
However, that means Apple had to use the IGP (integrated graphics processor) that came with it (Intel HD Graphics 3000) which is still generally slow.
Turning to an AMD chip might mean getting the GPU juice that Apple needed the Mac. The likely candidate could be the AMD Llano and possibly the A8-3500M running at 1.5GHz quad-core CPU with a Radeon HD 6620G. Now that’s a pretty powerful chip.
The problem though is that chip has a TDP of 35watts and that could problem for battery life. It would have been interesting to see how that would have come out.
In recent months though, Intel has been pushing for “ultrabooks” with Asus, Acer and Lenovo among the first to come out with their own competitors to the Macbook Air. The Asus Zenbook is the closest in terms of design and specifications.
Intel Capital also put up an Ultrabook Fund with a seed money of $300 million to help boost adoption of ultrabooks in the market. I told the folks from Intel Philippines that they should put that money to making SSD more affordable, if not as cheap as HDD.
I’m not sure about the timing of this ultrabook but it could be Intel’s way of telling Apple that if they pick AMD for the next Macbook Air, Intel will heavily support competitors either to undercut the price of the MBA and/or offer better hardware. That remains to be seen though.
Question for us regular folks is — will you be getting a Mac if it had an AMD chip in it?
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