AMD's Notebook Salvo

Amidst the news of death and disaster in the Notebook and PC market, AMD foresees a huge opportunity in infusing advanced graphics processing and power efficiencies into the mid-range notebook market, at economic price points. In fact Dell has begun to offer AMD’s Carrizo (or A series) based laptops, PCs and desktop modules this year, post an extended hiatus with the company. This was announced during Computex 2015.

Is this market dying or poised for reinvention? The latter is probably true with significant potential for growth via economic but value added products. With the launch of Carrizo, AMD is essentially attempting to capture the value spectrum that lies between high cost-high performance PCs and low-end Tablets. 52% of the consumer computing space is occupied by Notebooks and Laptops, with the biggest section of this market at the $400 - $700 price point. This is the price point most people buying laptops are willing to spend.

AMD’s Carrizo is said to offer twice the gaming performance as Intel’s i7 with advanced compression and 4K support (because of High Efficiency Video Coding or HEVC). The processors will carry 4 CPU and 8 GPU cores as well. While Intel continues to see a declining market share in this space, primarily due to its pricing and its shift towards Cloud and Data Centers, AMD may be positioned to capture a bigger piece of this market with its sixth generation A-series offering.

AMD has been in hibernation with few product launches. This launch of Carrizo, along with the anticipated launch of the Fiji GPUs should lift the prospects of this semiconductor leader – Samsung potentially acquiring it or not.