AMD unveils mobile PC chip platform details

18 May 2007

AMD's market share in the first quarter of 2007 slipped more than 5 percentage points to less than 20 per cent for the first time since 2005 as Intel revamped its own product line and slashed prices on older chips.

The new platform is a collection of microprocessors, graphics chips and other chips, and is aimed at improving battery life and enhancing graphics and video processing performance, AMD said.

According to the chipmaker, the notebooks with the platform, Code-named Puma, are expected out by mid-2008. The platform also draws on the capabilities of graphics chipmaker ATI, which AMD's had acquired in October 2006 for $5.4-billion.

At the heart of the Puma is an entirely new micro-architecture used to make a new microprocessor code-named Griffin, which features memory controllers that operate on a separate power plan than the cores, which means the cores can go into significantly reduced power states when not needed.

This means AMD can change frequencies much faster with a lot more agility, an important attribute for being compatible with Microsoft's latest software, Windows Vista.
The chipmaker says it was also planning a new chipset.