Llano's with Hats? AMD's New Fusion A-Series Slated for Our Laptop Rentals

First things first: this headline has nothing to do with AMD’s new Llano chip and everything to do with the insanely popular Youtube video about homicidal cartoon llamas.

Moving on…

It’s not easy being a chip manufacturer these days, what with Intel having such a strangle-hold on the market. But AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) isn’t quite ready to throw the towel in yet. The company has a new Fusion A-Series chipset, affectionately referred to as Llano, that is designed to combat Intel’s popular line-up.

Llano will be a hybrid between a graphics chip and a microprocessor – and it will be on the market within the month.

AMD’s marketing exec John Taylor is optimistic about the chip’s success (as expected – he does work for marketing, after all) – and he shared his feelings with Bloomberg news. Taylor said, “We expect that we will lead Intel in battery life in every notebook form factor.”

It’s a bold claim, but one we expect he can back-up, because Llano does seem poised to offer prolonged battery life. Factor in that the graphics processing on this bad boy is an improvement over certain dedicated models, and Llano isn’t looking half so bad.

Even the critics are coming out of the woodwork to give the Llano a thumb’s up. Endpoint Technologies, Robert Kay, came forward to say that the Llano chip-set should trump Intel’s much-hyped Sandy Bridge chips. They can actually run DirectX 11 graphics, which means they are compatible with Microsoft’s top standards.

The hardware manufacturers are also coming out to support AMD’s newest efforts, as over 150 different notebook and desktop models currently under production expect to feature the chips. Specifically, HP is planning to put out nearly a dozen new Llano-based laptops in short order. Toshiba is also reportedly on board.

Slap a flowery hat on these new fusion chips and they are good to go to market.

[Editorial Note: We expect to see the Llano chip-set making its way in to our laptop rental inventory sometime soon. Until then, stay tuned -- same llama station, same llama channel.]