Op-ed: AMD may be facing irrelevance
Today, AMD is announcing availability for a few new A-series desktop processors. Versions of these chips, codenamed Trinity and based on AMD's Piledriver architecture, have already been shipping in laptops and desktops for some time now, but this marks the first time that the chips will be available to consumers and system builders directly.
The chips aren't bad—the integrated graphics processor on some of the chips are capable of beating Intel's HD 4000 GPU in gaming performance, though the CPUs aren't quite capable of beating last year's Sandy Bridge processors at similar clock speeds. For AMD, the issue is that they're still talking mostly about desktop and laptop chips.
That's not to say that Intel has moved away from desktop and laptop processors—the PC industry may not be growing much these days, but it's still sizable and profitable for the people making the chips (if not always the people who make the computers themselves). Intel continues to roll out new Ivy Bridge processors for mid- and low-end desktops and laptops, and desktops, laptops, and Ultrabooks factored heavily into its presentations about its upcoming Haswell architecture at IDF this year.
