As PC Watch reports, AMD showed an interesting slide during its presentation at the Cutting Edge IT & Electronics Comprehensive Exhibition (CEATEC) event near Tokyo.

Under the title, "What to Expect in 2009," the AMD slide lists a number of items: the move to 40nm process technology, the arrival of the OpenCL general-purpose GPU API, widespread use of GDDR5 memory, consumer GPGPU applications, "HD+" televisions, and... Windows 7. To be more specific, the slide says "Windows 7 and DirectX 11" on one line.

PC Watch doesn't say much on the subject, so it's not fully clear what AMD was referring to there. Perhaps the firm let slip Microsoft's release schedule, or perhaps it's just talking about getting drivers working with pre-release versions of the OS. Judging by the context, though, it certainly looks like AMD expects Windows 7 to come out next year.

A 2009 launch sounds plausible, too. Microsoft has apparently been cutting fat from the OS by removing apps like Windows Mail, Windows Photo Gallery, and Windows Movie Maker. Also, recent reports have claimed Microsoft's internal calendar sets the Windows 7 "gold" date in early June. According to ZDNet's Ed Bott, Microsoft would have to trim the OS's beta cycle to get it out before next summer, but that schedule "would be downright leisurely compared to the one Microsoft followed for Windows XP, which was launched in October 2001, only 20 months after its predecessor, Windows 2000." [via tech report]