14 DAY TRIAL // AMD, the world's second largest chip maker, has been expressing its opinion on the fast-growing netbook market segment, claiming that it isn't interested in that area, as it considers it to be just a phase in the PC industry. However, the company has shown a deep interest in the market for ultraportable, thin laptops with the launch of its Yukon platform – expected to get an update in the upcoming future, as the manufacturer is preparing to launch a more interesting 'Congo' platform – and Athlon Neo processors, which are to compete with Intel's CULV platform.
According to a recent AMD roadmap, the Congo platform is designed to provide the company with a chance at the growing market for ultraportable and thin laptops, better competing with Intel's growing CULV platform. Upcoming Congo-based systems will be featured with a more advanced M780G chipset and will provide users with the benefits delivered by the new ATI Radeon HD 3200 IGP graphics chip, said to support hardware decoding and HD formats, as well as DirectX 10 gaming. Additional features of the upcoming platform include support for DisplayPort, HDMI, eSATA and Hybrid Graphics, which will allow users to connect additional discrete graphics to the integrated graphics solution.
Congo is expected to become a potential competitor for NVIDIA's ION platform, the GeForce 9400M chipset, which has been featured on some of the latest netbooks, nettops and even fully fledged laptops, such as Apple's MacBooks. Using the new chipset, the Sunnyvale, California-based chip maker will try to better compete in a market segment that covers devices with 11-inch to 13-inch displays and go for prices between US$500 and US$1800.
Currently, AMD's Yukon platform is only supported by HP's Pavilion dv2, which has recently received an updated with the release of the dual-core Athlon Neo processors. It is still early to say what AMD's potential is with Congo in comparison to Intel's growing CULV platform.