AMD launches long-awaited “Puma” notebook platform

US chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. on Wednesday (June 4) officially rolled out a new notebook processor and platform at events in Taipei and Paris. AMD launched the much-awaited line-up of chips for laptops, code-named Griffin, as well as the platform that will support it, code-named Puma.

Sunnyvale, California-based chipmaker hopes that its third-generation “Puma” platform that contains a collection of microprocessors, graphics chips and other chips will strengthen its position in the surging notebook market.

With the launch of it’s first-ever chip platform designed specifically for notebook personal computers, AMD is apparently making attempts to catch up with Intel Corp.’s Centrino notebook platform, formerly code-named Santa Rosa.

The technologies added to the core of a Puma system are: Turion X2 Ultra processor, Mobility Radeon HD 3000 series GPU, AMD M780 series chipset sporting Hybrid graphics and 802.11 a/b/g/n WiFi.

"Puma" is expected to improve battery life, graphics and video processing, and improve overall visual performance. "The next generation is all about graphics and throughput," said Leslie Sobon, AMD's worldwide director of product marketing. As nobody needs to open Word and Excel documents faster, so AMD is focusing on speeding up video and video games performance for home users.

The new platform is built upon the AMD M690 mobile chipset and 65nm process-based AMD Turion 64 X2 dual-core mobile technology, released in April and May 2007, respectively.

According to Sobon, more than 100 different notebook PCs are designed to use versions of the Puma platform, and computer makers using Puma chips include Acer Inc, Asus, Dell Inc, Fujitsu Siemens Computers BV and Hewlett-Packard Co.

"Griffin," which is AMD's first architecture specifically designed for mobile use, allows notebooks to have much more powerful systems going for them while having much better power management, memory efficiency, and processor bandwidth. Griffin CPU runs at up to 2.4 GHz at average 35W power consumption.

AMD’s Puma will face challenge from the Intel Santa Rosa upgrade to the Centrino notebook PC platform, which was launched by US chip giant Intel last year on May 9th.

The "Santa Rosa" upgrade of Intel’s Centrino notebook platform adds longer battery life and faster computing to the technology bundle of a processor, chipset, and wireless card. It includes Core 2 Duo processors, its first dual-core processors optimized for laptops, support for the draft version of 802.11n wireless networking and a Turbo Memory feature that supplements the standard hard drive with NAND flash for faster booting.

Advanced Micro Devices is the world's second-largest maker of personal-computer processors, behind Intel. The company is also world's second-largest supplier of x86 based processors, the largest supplier of discrete graphics products as a result of the merger with ATI Technologies in 2006, and owns a 37 percent share of Spansion, a supplier of non-volatile flash memory.