AMD to Fight Netbooks in 2011

New 10-15W Chip

 

This is going to be interesting. Unlike Intel, whom has alot of profitability in the ULV processor market, I wouldnt be too surprised if AMD threw some of there ULV equivalent Neo processors under the bus to take the advantage in the Netbook CPU market.

 

Don't get me wrong... I realy like AMD and its products, but I think it is a little too late for AMD.

Most notebook/netbook manufacturers are accustomed to intel products. I mean apart from Acer and HP almost all the others use intel cpus/chipsets. It is going be very hard for AMD to convince them to leave intel.

The only chance for AMD to succeed is to develop and sell CPUs that are faster than Intel's. AMD should follow the same approach as the one they have been using with ATI in their war against nVidia.

I like the sound of this

 

There has definitely been a distinct lack of AMD products in the netbook market. Its true that Intel does have a much larger market share currently in this segment, but hopefully that will change and some competition with ensue.

I think for AMD to really compete, the need to push out a very energy efficient chip. That's exactly how Atom got where it is today. It's cheap to build, has very low power consumption, and its performance isn't too bad (ie, it can handle all basic tasks). But thats probably not enough. AMD will need to tempt some manufacturers who perhaps aren't so keen on their processors.

There is also a growing market for netbooks with more premium features, such as HD screens and quite importantly, 720/1080p video playback. AMD could quite nicely cater to this particular market, and probably get good uptake of their processors by manufacturers. As always, time will tell.

 

AMD Neos already outperform the Atom though so it's not unrealistic for them to overtake the netbook market. They need however to bring about a chip with a lower power consumption and a cheaper price tag. A netbook losses half its appeal if its price is too high.

 

A 32nm die shrink of the Athlon 64 tweaked with modern techniques for better power consumption would probably be a tough competitor for Atom. It already has the memory controller on the die so the chipset would have little power consumption. Also at 32nm the Athlon 64 would use a tiny die compared to what it had when it was made, so it would be cheap to manufacture. Also there were single and dual cores available that would translate into single and dual core atom competitors. Atom is a very weak processor per clock speed relative to other modern processors and the Athlon64 would probably be better with that as well. A 1.6Ghz Athlon 64 using the 32nm process I believe would give Atom a run for its money. AMD used to have something like this based on their Athlon XP processors (maybe they still do), where they had them undervolted and underclocked to 1Ghz and under that used very little power, in the same order that the Atom does.

 

I don't get it sometime. Can't AMD optimise/downclock/undervolt an Athlon II such as the Athlon II x2 240e and use it instead. I mean surely an Athlon II x2 240e clocked at 1.2Ghz would have a low DTP and will bit any Atom around.

 

I think you're refering to the Geode. It was running as low as 366 MHz and the maximum was 1.6ghz. The Geode is similar to the Athlon XP-M. It doesn't generate a lot of heat and has mazing overclocking capasities .

The Geode was originally developed by Cyrix though. Cyrix merged with National in 1997, and in 2003 they sold their Geode business to AMD.

I did a bit of digging. The AMD Geode NX1750 has a DTP of 25W, that's almost half the DTP of an AMD Athlon XP-M 2000 (DTP 45W). An AMD Geode 600 (366 MHz) has a power consumption of 1.2W and a DTP of 2.8W.

More about Geode here, here, and here.

Intel went back to the Pentium III to develop the Core Duo/Core 2 Duo. Maybe AMD should use the Geode as a strating point for their future developments

 

All i want is a "netbookish" computer with decent speed and a usable igp that actually can do YouTube in 720p and light gaming. (Steam ect.)
Dont really think a Atom N450 with Ion2 can do this, so looking forward to 2011.

(Asus Eee with Atom 330 doesent count.)

 

Next gen Atom will be able to do what you want. It and is codenamed "Cedar Trail". 1080p playback along with a 10-15% faster 32nm cpu.

 

Thanks for the info, Jayayess1190.

 

You might like the upcoming EeePC 1201T, which will have an AMD Athlon Neo MV40, 1.6GHz, with an integrated Mobility Radeon 3200.

Out of curiosity, why doesn't my Atom 330 count?

 

The ASUS Eee PC 1201N is more like a portable nettop.
But it is still a sweet system.

Does anyone know if Asus will ever do a 12" Eee with Intel Atom D510?

 

Do you think it will be worth waiting for it till next year, or will there be no significant difference in performace when you compare to current models like the asus 1215 (price = 480€ here) for example. (My mom decided to buy me a netbook after I spend 1100€ on clothes rofl). I would probably already need one in oktober but if I would already regret my purchase after 3 months (upcomming asus 1218 for example), I could hold out for a bit longer.

 

Yeah. Remember back when the first generation of Opterons was released? The server market was owned by Intel and within a year, Opteron was everywhere (even on Dells). Not saying its an easy job to make a product thats faster and cheaper than your rivals but all it takes is awareness of that fact. Getting a favourable home page article and review on anandtech helps.