During our recent conversation with some key people at AMD, we got a feeling that AMD is considering what to do with the Phenom brand; but the answer whether the brand will stay or go is not conclusive.

We can confirm that AMD is thinking about the future of that brand and as you can clearly see, AMD is putting a lot of effort in its Fusion brand. Fusion might be a top platform brand that will envelop the CPU, chipset and graphics from AMD, probably for both desktop and mobile, as AMD still cares a great deal about discrete graphics. 

The first 45nm Quad-cores will remain branded as Phenoms with a number after the name, and we don't think that a big number will make it easier for consumer to understand. We’ve heard that the new Phenom now has five digits while the last one had four.

Barcelona, a 65nm K10, is something that AMD wants to forget as soon as possible and to move to more successful, better performing parts.