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25 May 2007
AMD has announced its first fully-fledged mobile platform to compete with the dominant Intel Centrino platform.
The chip vendor has lagged a long way behind Intel in the mobile market for years due to having no dedicated notebook family, but the company is hoping to change that with the introduction of its Puma platform. Based around a new processor, codenamed Griffin, and the RS780 mobile chipset, the platform promises significantly better overall system performance, battery life and graphics and video handling. Systems based on Puma are due out in the middle of 2008.
The mobile push comes just weeks after Intel took the wraps off Santa Rosa, the next generation of its Centrino mobile platform, based around the Menlow processor, the first mobile chip to be built on the 45nm production process. It will arrive to market before AMD’s Griffin processor, which will be built on the existing, and less efficient, 65nm process.
The Griffin processor boasts HyperTransport 3.0, which triples the peak I/O bandwidth over existing AMD mobile solutions. New memory controllers integrated with the processor silicon will allow the processor cores to enter reduced power states independently. Dynamic performance scaling should also help boost battery life as each core can operate at independent frequencies and voltages.
Chris Cloran, vice-president, AMD notebook division, said: “Through the combination of our recent processor and chipset launches and the Better by Design programme, AMD is constantly establishing new heights of competitiveness in serving the needs of our notebook customers. With the unveiling of the Puma mobile platform we’re sending a clear signal to the market that we intend to drive continued innovation in notebook computing in 2008 and beyond.”
The new RS780 chipset, based on PCI Express Generation 2 and the HyperTr ansport 3.0 specifications, will play a key role in the success of Puma. It will deliver motherboard DirectX 10 graphics processing, integrated multi-monitor support DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort support, and high definition multimedia support with the Unified Video Decoder. PowerXpress promises to conserve battery life by enabling dynamic switching from discrete to dedicated graphics depending on application.
Roger Kay, president of market analyst Endpoint Technologies Associates, said: “With this introduction, AMD is stepping up its mobility story. With increased performance and power efficiency, Puma represents the company’s first explicitly mobile platform. It’s safe to assume that this offering is just the first of what will turn out to be a stream of evolving products based on the company’s new open-platform mobile technology.”
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