Codenamed Desna, the new APUs will be part of AMD’s Fusion Z-series, but at this point technical details are rather sketchy. AMD touts the new series as capable of “powering the ultimate HD tablet” and offering “true APU technology,” which is about as vague as it gets.

However, it is clear that we are looking at proper Fusion parts tweaked for tablets. Bear in mind that AMD’s C-50 APU has already found its way into Acer’s Iconia W500 tablet and it is safe to assume that new Z-series parts will offer slightly superior power efficiency than current C-series APUs. The C-50 variant used in the Iconia reportedly consumes up to 5 watts. However, Z-series specs remains unclear at this point, although it seems likely these APUs will be based on the same Bobcat core as Ontario and Zacate chips.

Of course, Z-series APUs will offer full DirectX 11 compatibility and AMD doesn’t fail to mention that they will be more than capable of smoothly streaming full HD video. In addition, AMD promises acceleration in IE9, HTML5, MS Office 10 and Adobe Flash 10.2. External monitors will also be supported and AMD notes that the Z-series should allow “immersive gaming.”

This promises to be a rather eventful summer for AMD and we will try to find out more about the Z-series over the coming days, so stay tuned.

Instead, tablets are an “incremental device” with limited applications that appeal to upscale consumers, not the mass market or businesses, Stacy Smith said.

The chipmaker sees sales of notebook computers leaping ahead and with them, orders for full-powered processors.

According to Reuters, Smith said Intel would gladly use its manufacturing might to combine its proprietary architecture with other companies’ technology, and might even consider making non-Intel cores for some customers.

“If Apple or Sony came to us and said ‘I want to do a product that involves your IA (Intel architecture) core and put some of my IP around it’, I wouldn’t blink. That would be fantastic business for us,” he said.

“Then you get into the middle ground of ‘I don’t want it to be a IA core, I want it to be my own custom-designed core,’ and … that would be a much more in-depth discussion and analysis,” Smith said.

He spoke to reporters at an investor conference in London along with Christian Morales, head of Intel’s operations in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

“The data is the data,” Morales said. “The [highest sales] volumes are notebooks, then netbooks, then other devices.”

Netbooks surged ahead in 2008-2010 because the economy was bad and they were cheap, Smith said. Now that the economy is starting to recover, netbook sales have tanked because consumers and businesses want real computers.

Even Apple is selling MacBooks at a faster clip than iPads, Smith said. The iPad runs on a Samsung processor, while Apple uses Intel Core2 processors for MacBooks.

In the worst-case scenario, tablets move ahead of netbooks late this year and might steal a third of the netbook business by 2013, he predicted.