The problem with halo products is people focus on them to the exclusion of most everything else. Nearly all tech companies have been in the business of presenting and showing off halo products which after all serves their purpose of showing the best efforts of a company or brand to the high profile, high-end product range where all of the press focuses their attention on – AMD knows this all too well, and in gathering the press together last November 3, convincingly showed that a product line, like a story, is composed of more than just the header.

The AMD Media Round Table collected together a dizzying array of AMD products and more product roadmaps than we could shake a camera at. The full range of AMD processors for Business, Mobile, Server and everything else in between had comprehensive roadmaps showing AMD’s plans all up to early 2010, and showed AMD’s progression along many significant technological advances both in those future dates and in the past innovations such as the 45nm manufacturing process, virtualization, true dual and quad cores, and 64-bit computing.

                                            Concentrating on customer convenience as well as power enables AMD to present excellent solutions.

Basically, the round table discussion served as a refresher for AMD innovations, and as a primer for future advancements along nearly all AMD product lines. What’s surprising is the lack of an actual “banner” product, an actual product for release that would have titillated the assembled press. Surprising, but then again, it is not exactly a handicap for AMD. With their solid platform offerings filling out each and every product niche, AMD’s position gives off more of the flavor of consolidation, and this is borne out of their latest catch phrase “The Future is Fusion”.

                                             AMD processors fused with the GPU processing powerand smart software.

Some examples of upcoming processors the Perseus and the Kodiak platforms for Commercial, Puma and Shrike platforms for AMD’s mobile solutions, Shanghai and Istanbul for the Server side. There’s also the Spider and Leo platform for the enthusiast of course. A central theme with all of these platforms is the concept of longevity through the use of a socket for as long as it is technologically viable for the applications it will be used for.

                                            Processor raodmap.

This again seems to be an act of consolidation, one where AMD does not rely on any one very strong product to serve as the focal point of a large marketing campaign. The platforms are the stars here, and aggressive pricing as well as advancements where it counts, like Platform Level Security for server products, Fast Wireless through AMD’s work with trusted partners like Atheros, Broadcom and Ralink, and smart application of GPU power on the home products side.

                                             Platforms for the enthusiast/consumer and the mobile sectors.

This leads us to the graphics side of things, an arena where AMD/ ATI needs no introduction. With the introduction of the 4830, 4550 and the soon-to-be-released 4850 X2, AMD has, ever since the introduction of the 4000 series, a complete line-up of videocard solutions for all levels of graphical need, at all price ranges, and most importantly at all points of competition with Nvidia’s line-up. What’s even more exciting is the fact that all of the products of both companies match up well with each other, price-wise at least.

                                             AMD/ATI has an answer atevery level of the market, and for every Nvidia product.

When it comes to performance, ATI has forced Nvidia into a position of catch-up, especially considering that these performance advances were made by using a relatively humble piece of silicon called the 4850. From this base ingredient, the dual core, higher clocked, and better equipped parts has sprung out, resulting in category-dominating products at very competitive prices.

                                             An amazing feature set for the Radeon series.

The Radeon series also brings to the table a whole slew of features, and the round table discussion summarized these perfectly – primary among these are DirectX 10.1, UVD (Universal Video Decoder) 2, 7.1 channel sound (through integrated HDMI capability) – without the need for a separate audio cable leading from the videocard, Enhanced DVD Upscale for select models, Dynamic Contrast Correction, and Advanced Video Transfer. The last item is particularly interesting – it describes the process of transcoding video faster than real-time using the partner consumer application Cyberlink PowerDirector.

                                             The result of fusion and consolidation with their graphics products may also be happening with thier processor offerings.

The discussion also covered AMD’s work with GPGPU applications using the raw processing power available from the 4000 series. Compared to a rig using only the CPU to transcode, a 4800 series Radeon can finish transcoding 1 hour of 1080p video 19 times faster – translated into hours and minutes, that’s 9 hours anf 54 minutes versus an amazing 32 minutes flat. With performance like this, it can be argued that the 4870 X2 is actually a halo product – not far off the mark as it is the fastest and most expensive graphics card available from AMD/ATI, but then again its roots cannot be farther away from that of the GTX280 – a monolithic, expensive to produce videocard whose primary purpose seems to be a hao product – compared to the 4870 X2 which is a result of consolidation over years of development and improvement – hopefully something that is also happening on the processor side of the business. Fusion indeed seems to be the future of AMD.