AMD set to ditch ATI in brand cull

Chip company aims to simplify the buying experience

AMD has announced plans for a fundamental overhaul of some of its key brands over the coming year, with ATI and other brands set to be dropped and replaced by Vision, Radeon and Firepro.

Executives at the chip firm expect the demise of ATI as a brand to begin in the fourth quarter of this year and end by September 2011.

AMD will continue to use the ATI logo in 2011 for existing products. New graphics cards will immediately take on the AMD Radeon and AMD Firepro logos, but even the
reference to AMD is expected to be dropped in due course with cards simply being branded 'Radeon' or 'Firepro'.

"We want to simplify the buying experience. We'll complete this within a year and that is giving it a lot more time than it would require," AMD said.

A consumer survey commissioned by AMD found that the vast majority of punters are aware of AMD's takeover of ATI, giving it the confidence to dump the brand.

References to particular chips will also go, and the Athlon, Phenom and Turion brands will be replaced by the non-chip specific Vision brand.

AMD's combined CPU and GPU Accelerated Processing Unit Fusion products will fall under the Vision brand as well.

However, AMD will continue the Opteron brand for its line of server chips.