AMD US launch. Pop goes the Dweezil!

THE CONTENTof the US AMD Athlon 64 launch was much the same as the European launches - those places just have a press office that was not missed by the intrepid INQUIRER staff covering the show. This was even after it was pointed out by many of the helpful AMD staff. Ah well...

The show, was pretty much the same as the one in Europe, content wise, with a few differences, with a few names and places changed. The first difference was the venue, starting at the Yerba Buena Center of the Arts, and moving to the W hotel across the street.

Soon after the press sign-up, the Area64 winners filed in, followed by a who's who of the tech press and, more interesting, the mainstream press and financial analyst community, a group notably absent from the Opteron launch. Overall, it was a much more festive occasion, with lots of software shown, especially in the form of shipping products, rather than promises. This is good for AMD, real good.

Dirk Meyer gave the main part of the presentation, looking much happier than my admittedly awful photographic skills portrayed him. There were lists of people showing their love for AMD's 64 bit chips, some of whom were quite interesting. The main one that made me wonder was one of the first, Bill Joy, ex of Sun. That is a topic for another day, or maybe later today if time permits.

Then they trotted out Roy Benson of Asleep at the Wheel (I don't know either, use Google) who, ummm, jammed away on his acoustic guitar to the bewilderment of a crowd much too young to appreciate this music. I simply thought the PR people had just lost it, or Hector had someone that he wanted to meet. When he started to talk about technology's effect on the music industry, I really started to question what went into the water at AMD central, these people must not have a clue about their audience.

Then Hector made a comment about 'that was the past, this is the future', and out came Dweezil Zappa. Ok, they got it, and me too.

The rest of the keynote was similar to the Euro event. It was colorful, bright and fun compared to the pure business and much more qualified statements of the Opteron launch. Overall, it went well, and you could almost see all the AMD people saying 'pinch me, is it FINALLY happening'. Well done guys, it went perfectly. µ