In an upcoming profile of AMD, Forbes reports that the company's Llano family of Fusion combination CPU-GPU systems was under consideration by Apple to be used as the brains behind the MacBook Air for its 2011 revision.



From MacRumors:

AMD lost out to Intel, however, as the necessary parts were late in being delivered to Apple and had unacceptably high failure rates. AMD struggled with its new fabless model while trying to crank out ?fusion? processors that combined a CPU and a GPU in a single part. On paper the idea was promising. A notebook processor dubbed ?Llano? got a close look from Apple for an update to the ultralight MacBook Air, scheduled for launch in mid-2011.

But AMD couldn't get early working samples of Llano to Apple on time, one former employee says. Several former AMD employees disagree on just how close AMD came. We had it, one says. But too many of the Llano parts were faulty. AMD lost the deal. The company reportedly also pitched Apple on using its Brazos family of Fusion systems in the Apple TV, but Apple proved to be uninterested in the proposal.

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