AMD Prepares 100 Laptop Designs Ahead of the Puma Launch

AMD announced that it is currently working on 100 different laptop designs based on the Puma mobile architecture. The company is gearing up for a massive attack on the mobile computing market that will probably unleash in June, during the Computex show.

"That's twice as many designs as we had at the launch of our last mobile platform", said John Taylor, director of product and strategic marketing at AMD's Graphics Products Group.

According to the chip manufacturer, the 100 designs will be showcased during the show in Taipei. AMD is bringing in the best of its technology, given the fact that other mobile solution vendors will take this opportunity to introduce their own platforms.

For instance, Intel will officially introduce its low-cost, energy-efficient Atom processor, especially tailored for ultra-mobile applications. More than that, the chip giant will also unveil its Centrino 2 mobile platform, a direct competitor for AMD's Puma design. As if this were not enough, VIA officially announced that it would showcase the upcoming Isaiah/CN mobile chip that is expected to appear later this year.

The Puma platform is comprised of the low-voltage AMD Griffin processor, a chipset with integrated graphics, as well as an ATI Radeon HD3400 discrete graphics core. As far as the connectivity options are concerned, the Puma will come with a third-party Wi-Fi processor, able to support wireless networking in the 802.11a/b/g/n flavors.

According to the latest reports from the industry, the Griffin processor has some power management issues, despite the fact that AMD is touting it as the most efficient chip ever. However, AMD bets all the money on the unusual graphics capabilities of the platform, powered by a high-end graphics core with Hybrid Graphics technology.

"This combination of discrete and integrated graphics offers a significant boost in performance compared with relying on the discrete chip alone", said David Nalasco, senior technical marketing manager at AMD's Graphics Products Group.

When the system deals with normal workloads, the discrete graphics core shuts down, in order to spare the battery. It resumes its activity as soon as additional 3D graphics processing power is required.


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