AMD jumps out of notebook starting blocks with Puma

Stan Beer
Sunday, 20 May 2007 09:55

Your IT - Home IT

Watch out Intel Centrino because Puma, AMD's first platform to explicitly target mobile computing, is waiting to pounce. On Friday, AMD outlined details of its new Puma notebook platform which claims increased battery life, faster performance and richer graphics and video driven by the latest AMD and ATI chip technologies. However, we're still at least a year away from the first products.

According to AMD, the new Puma platform, expected to be released in mid-2008, will comprise a next-generation notebook processor with a codename of Griffin plus the  ATI RS780 IGP mobile chipset with a DX10 compatible graphics processing unit (GPU) and based on 55nm process technology.

The new announcement pits the AMD Puma squarely against rival Intel's recently announced Core 2 Duo-based Santa Rosa Centrino mobile platform.

The notebook arena is a market where Intel has always dominated, even during 2005 and 2006, when AMD was carving out huge chunks of market share at Intel's expense with pretensions of reaching 30% by 2008. Recent figures show, however, that Intel's spate of new dual-core chip platforms have hurt AMD badly, pushing the smaller Silicon Valley chipmaker's market share back down to below 19% in the first quarter of 2007, while Intel's share soared above 80%.

Naturally, the new AMD Griffin processor is still tightly under wraps but it will be based on the 65nm dual-core AMD Turion 64 X2 chip announced this month.

In addition to enhanced video and graphics capabilities, AMD is playing up the power saving and energy efficiency of Puma claimed to be made possible by the design of the Griffin.

Power saving features include: power optimised HyperTransport 3.0 bus with memory controllers that use power independently of the processor cores; the ability for each core to draw power independently based on usage and more than triple the I/O bandwidth.

As far as graphics are concerned, AMD claims that RS780 chipset will deliver a rich visual experience made possible by: DirectX 10 GPU on the motherboard, high-def multimedia support with the Unified Video Decoder; integrated multi-monitor support with DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort options; and the ability to process graphics with the GPU without using the main processing cores as a power saving feature when on battery power.

“Through the combination of our recent processor and chipset launches and the Better by Design program, AMD is constantly establishing new heights of

competitiveness in serving the needs of our notebook customers,” said Chris Cloran, vice president, AMD Notebook Division. “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.”

Further details of Puma will be presented by AMD Fellow, Maurice Steinman at the Spring Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, California on May 22.