14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that AMD is finally determined to make a move against Intel's Atom processor. While the chip giant is said to release the first dual-core Atom sometime in October, the Sunnyvale company decided to make available as of November 65 nm Athlon microprocessors that would target the same market area as Intel’s. The Athlon 2650e and the dual-core Athlon X2 3250e, both paired with the AMD 740 chipset, are the products we're talking about.
The Atom processor was designed by Intel for the netbook market, and, besides VIA's Nano, the chip had no real competitor on that area. Nano didn't do too great as a competitor to Intel's CPU, that should be admitted, and AMD was a little late with developing a product suitable for this area of the mobile PC market. The situation is about to change, at least this is what slides published on CHW suggest.
The Sunnyvale chip maker is aiming at a so called “ultra value client” (UVC) segment of the market with the two processors stated for release in about two months. The Athlon X2 3250e runs at 1.5GHz core frequency and comes with 1MB L2 cache, while Athlon 2650e features a 1.6GHz core clock and 512KB L2 cache. The TDP of the processors is nevertheless a little too high if compared to the 2-watts-or-less Atom with Silverthorne core or even with the cheaper 4-watt version with Diamondville core, namely 22W for the dual core and 15W for the 2650e processor.
What is interesting enough is that AMD is rather going for the so called nettops area than aiming at the netbook market. The nettops are quite cheap desktops which can be used mainly as Internet computers but can serve as cloud computing devices as well. The prices for the new chips are expected to range from $40 to $50, yet this may still be a problem for AMD, as Intel has its Diamondville available for $23 and $44, and it can go even lower, as the production costs rise only to $6.
In the meantime, Intel will have its first dual-core Atom processor with Diamondville core, and some netbook manufacturers have already confirmed October as the timeframe of the release. Detailed specifications and pricing have not been revealed yet.