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AMD announces upcoming Kabini nettops in Socket AM1
Basically, it's low end hardware for a low end price tag. It also gives AMD a way to get rid of chips that burn too much power for the chips' main intended uses in tablets and laptops.
AMD claims that by making the chips socketed, unlike previous generation Zacate chips and various Intel Atom nettops, they make the computer upgradeable. That's technically true, but they're probably not going to be very upgradeable. It's unlikely that the upcoming Mullins chips will be much faster than Kabini in a desktop. After that, AMD will probably move to DDR4 memory, and that means a new socket.
Still, I'm not a fan of the nomenclature. In 2006, AMD launched Socket AM2. That was followed by Socket AM2+, then AM3, then AM3+. Those names may seem awkward at first glance, but they're actually descriptive: AM2 and AM2+ use DDR2 memory, while AM3 and AM3+ use DDR3.
AMD has also launched sockets FM1, FM2, and FM2+, but those are a different line entirely. The F probably stands for "fusion", which is what AMD used to call its APUs until they realized that Fusion System Architecture Intermediate Language (FSAIL) tempted people to drop the S from the acronym.
But now they have Socket AM1? After all of the others listed above? That makes no sense. Someone has been taking lessons from Microsoft's Xbox division.
Comments
The name confusion is not much different that 1156 vs 1155 vs 1150. A layperson would just assume the higher the number the newer/better the socket. No one calls them H1/H2/H3.
Sure, it has some physical meaning behind it (number of pins in the socket), and they have a real name - just no one uses it, and marketing pushes up on the poorer name.