Posted on Thursday, June 18 2009 @ 20:04 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
AMD's upcoming dual-core chip for ultraportable laptops is codenamed Congo, but the company decided to get rid of this name due to widespread criticism. The chip maker says they named the product after the river Congo, but many people linked the name to the conflicted same-name country. More info
at CNET.
Contacted for comment this week, AMD spokesman John Taylor said the company "truly regrets" causing any offense, even unintentionally. "It was an oversight not to see that (the code name) could be viewed in an entirely different context," he said.
AMD began using the name "2nd Generation Ultrathin Platform" instead of Congo as part of a natural pre-launch naming transition, Taylor said. "The Daily Kos blog helped finalize and expedite a process that was already in motion," he added. "We're striving for that codename to be retired."
