AMD offers Longevity to corporate customers

Manufacturing chip giant extends programme, much to the delight of specialist integrators

Keeping corporate customers sweet is the name of game as AMD extends its AMD64 Longevity programme to include low-power AMD64 mobile processors.

The Longevity programme guarantees that those chips covered will be available for at least five years, allowing integrators to present stable low-power PC, server and notebook solutions to businesses. According to AMD, customer pressure is behind the decision to include what is expected to be two low-power Turion-based mobile processors into the programme.

The announcement was made in advance of this week’s Embedded Systems Conference in Boston.

The high performance AMD64-based products are expected to be available with extended longevity to high-end embedded customers in Q4. They will be built into a wide range of equipment, including rugged field PCs, workstations and servers, blade servers for low airflow or other constrained environments, and process automation servers. New, value-based processors added to the programme are available immediately.

The move is already proving popular with integrators operating in specialist markets. One such integrator claimed that the decision was vital to AMD creating the kind of ‘future-proof’ systems its clients demand.

William Kehret, president of Themis Computer, said: “Themis’ high-performance products, based on AMD’s low power 32bit- and 64bit-capable parts, give our customers in the advanced communications and defence markets high processing power and system reliability for demanding application environments, while achieving a net reduction in total cost of ownership.

These systems are both easy for us to design and easy for customers to incorporate into their overall IT infrastructure.”

David Rich, director of 64bit embedded markets at AMD, commented: “For several years now, our high-end embedded customers have called on us because of the variety of processors that we offer in terms of power and performance ratios. Today we are responding to their requests for additional AMD64 low -power solutions.”