AMD's Atom Competitor to Be Launched by the End of the Year

AMD will not stand by and watch how Intel's Atom processor takes all the spotlight in the netbook market, especially since it is still far from producing a real competitor to the latter's high-end CPU lineup. As we already mentioned before, AMD is planning to release a processor meant to offer the necessary computing power for the latest releases in the low-cost PC market. Apparently, we should be seeing AMD's new CPU by the end of the year.

According to sources cited by Digitimes, Advanced Micro has announced its partners that it is developing a processor that will compete with Intel's Atom and VIA Technologies' Nano CPUs. Apparently, the new CPU will be given the official treatment by the end of this year, although there's yet no official confirmation of it. However, the same sources reveal, netbook related products are expected for shipment in the first half of 2009.

Up until now, AMD's CPU which is, as noted above, still to be confirmed officially has generated an impressive amount of speculation. Sadly, no one is able to offer any kind of details on the product, but most people expect it to be built on the company's previous-generation K8 architecture. The processor is said to support 64-bit instructions and to come as a single-core model built on the company's 65nm fabrication process. Most probably, the core will run at a clock speed of 1.2GHz. Also, chances are the processor will be priced slightly less than Intel's Atom.

Recent reports also indicate that AMD is currently negotiating with Micro-Star International (MSI), Hewlett-Packard (HP), Acer and vendors in China to plan out future orders for the new CPU. Because it is AMD's policy not to comment on unannounced products, details concerning the CPU's performance rate or technical sheet are scarce and, as it happens, mostly based on speculations. Still, if the cited sources are right, we should see additional details sometime in the followings weeks.