Even AMD Throws in Its Two Cents Regarding Tablets

Now that Advanced Micro Devices has shown its mettle on the tablet segment, it has taken a more active role in shaping consumer perception and expectations.

Computex 2012 has proven to be less one-sided than the other trade shows of the past year. No longer has a single product type or company stolen the show. Advanced Micro Devices contributed quite a bit to this. Though Intel tried to draw as many people as possible to its ultrabook and Ivy Bridge-filled booth, AMD's Trinity got a lot of attention too. One reason for this was the game play demo of an A-Series APU breezing through a game that gave Ivy Bridge trouble. Another was the fact that AMD has already scored tablet design wins, like the Acer model based on Trinity.

The Sunnyvale, California-based company has now gone on record in regard to its expectations for the slate segment. In an interview with Fox Business, the company's CEO (Chief Executive Officer) Rory Read expressed his belief that, in about five years, 20% of all tablets would run Windows 8. It wasn't exactly the sort of forecast we'd been hoping, not because we think 20% is a low number but because we were looking forward to some predictions more specific to AMD's product line. It is possible that AMD will more deeply explore the issue during AFDS (AMD Fusion Developer Summit) next week (June 11-15). Maybe it will even say how many APU-powered tablet models there are and how many are bound to ship this year and the next.

Until then, though, we have only this small bit about Windows 8 slates in general (and yes, that Acer Iconia Tab we have mentioned above does run Windows 8). We should see a nice showdown between Trinity/Hondo-based slates and Clovertrail models. Advanced Micro Devices has only one big obstacle to surmount at this point: lack of support for the Android operating system.

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