It looks like this acquisition just might be the death of ATI. At least as a brand name, that is.
CustomPC had the chance to interview AMD's Gareth Carter, who stated assuredly that after the deal is finished,
"The new company will be called AMD."
Richard Baker, Marketing Manager for AMD in Northern Europe, also weighed in during the interview, saying that it was unknown whether the familiar Radeon brand name would bite the dust as well.
"'We haven't made any final decisions yet," he said.
"But I'd personally be very surprised if we dropped any of those product names. The ATI company name is definitely going, though."
Baker went out of his way during the interview to stress the fact that the AMD/ATI deal was in no way a merger, but instead a complete takeover. Therefore, it is sensible that AMD would no longer retain the monikers of the acquired company, instead opting for a uniform brand-name throughout its products. What that means for future product names, of course, we cannot even speculate.
Chris Hook, Head of European PR at ATI, also provided a response to CustomPC on the name dump, stating
"I don't have a personal emotional attachment to it, one way or another." He then moved topics to talking a little bit about what is to (hopefully) come of the acquisition:
"I think the important thing is that we're going to make good products. ATI may be gone, but certainly lots of discussion is going to come over the next few days about the rest of our brands and their strengths."
We attempted to follow up with some of our own questions to ATI, but representatives understandably refused to comment further until the finer details of the acquisition are firmed up.