AMD unleashes Spider platform

AMD last week announced in the country its new PC platform codenamed Spider, which company executives expect would ensnare a market of gamers and multimedia enthusiasts in no time.

Spider is so far the most significant launch after the chipmaker’s acquisition of ATI Technologies last year for $5.4 billion.

It combines next-generation AMD Phenom quad-core processors, ATI Radeon 3800 series graphics, AMD 7-Series chipsets and ATI CrossFireX platform technology to deliver a scalable enthusiast desktop platform.

Interestingly, while touting how Spider’s coming would strongly impact the local market, AMD officials actually felt the earth moved under their feet as a moderate earthquake shook Metro Manila and other cities in Luzon.

With Spider, the company believes it would appeal to a large range of PC builders who may get it from leading original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) starting in the first quarter next year.

The AMD Spider platform is a major milestone on the path to Accelerated Computing, AMD’s vision for platform-level acceleration through co-processing. It can scale to three or four graphics processors to deliver a true gaming supercomputer.

Multimedia enthusiasts are also promised that they will enjoy best-in-class HD entertainment on the AMD Spider platform with the addition of the powerful visual processing capabilities of the ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series.

Lynn Yong, AMD senior marketing manager for ASEAN, said that aside from offering significant improvements in computing experience, the Spider platform gives consumers a system that could grow with AMD’s future innovations.

Yong said Spider, for example, is guaranteed to support AMD’s planned transition to 45nm manufacturing in 2008.