AMD Unveils its Mobile CPUs

If AMD preserved its market share for desktop CPU by cutting its price, the Texas-based company could not compete on the mobile CPU market against Intel Centrino platform. Taking into account the explosion of notebook market, this is financially not good news for AMD. So, the company could not let Intel run the mobile world without any reactions. It was unveiled under the code name Puma. This platform will be powered by new CPU named Griffin based on a revised and power-optimized K8 architecture. Those new CPUs will be engraved at 65nm, while frequency, voltage and power consumption can be modified in real-time depending on the CPU loading. If the CPU architecture is not really new, the remaining parts of the platform are really innovative. The chipset will be using PCI-Express 2.0 and many components will communicate to each other via HyperTransport 3.0 (Power Mac G5 were using the first version of this interface). thanks to the purchase of AMD, the integrated video chipset will manage hardware-decoding of HD video H.264 or VC-1, while playing BD and HD-DVD contents almost without requesting CPUs usage.
One will of course be able to add a true dedicated GPU, to deliver more demanding 3D power, however depending on the type of usage, the system will be able to shift from the dedicated GPU to the integrated video chipset to save power. Like Intel, AMD added some flash-based memory to its mobile motherboard to save power by reducing HD request/access and speeding up system and application launches.
Puma is expected for 2008, and if Apple will probably not move from Intel to AMD, it will push Santa Clara's giant to keep innovating to maintain both its leadership and Cupertino among its customers. The price of the Centrino platform components will also probably be lowered to compete with AMD at the price level too.