“Apple considered putting a notebook processor introduced by Advanced Micro Devices last year in its MacBook Air ultralight laptop computer, several former AMD employees say,” Brian Caulfield reports for Forbes.
“At the time, AMD was adapting to a new, fabless business model and cranking out new ‘fusion’ processors that combined a central processor (CPU) and a graphics processor (GPU) on a single slice of silicon,” Caulfield reports. “On paper, however, the idea was promising, and a notebook processor, dubbed ‘Llano,’ got a close look from Apple for an update to the ultralight MacBook Air, scheduled for launch in mid 2011.”
Caulfield reports, “AMD’s engineers were trying to do too much, too quickly, however, shifting to a new manufacturing process at Global Foundries for a processor with a radical new design.”
Read more in the full article here.