14 DAY TRIAL // With all the speculations, estimations and expectations going around about the netbook market, it comes as no surprise that AMD is planning a new energy efficient processor. This is all the more true especially since, as of now, the Intel Atom processor doesn't look like having so many competitors, and Intel is still facing problems in meeting the high product demands.
According to the German websiste EeePCNews, AMD is prepping a new processor specially designed for use in low-cost ultraportable laptops, also known as netbooks or sub-notebooks. The yet-unofficial central processing unit is a 64-bit single core chip that will be set to provide a clock speed of 1GHz. The energy-efficient design enables the processor to have only 8W. Even more, this small AMD processor is designed to provide 256KB of L2 cache memory and will come with an integrated memory controller that is set to support DDR2-4000 SODIMM memory.
According to the same source, the small processor is said to be "effectively half of a Turion X2 dual-core CPU," and is expected to become a computing alternative to Eee PC and similar products. However, until AMD decides to go official with this new energy-efficient CPU, Intel's Atom or other ARM-based products are the only alternatives for MIDs. This happens because this 8W version is probably not going to be cool or small enough to squeeze inside such a device, which means that AMD still has to work on this CPU architecture, granted the company really plans to get a strong share in the netbook market.
In the energy-efficient category, AMD's consumer processors are among the best processor solutions. Intel's take at this energy-efficient, low-cost market is its newly announced Atom processor, which provides the necessary computing power for the Eee PC and Wind netbooks. Unfortunately, Intel isn't yet ready for mass production for the Atom lineup and neither will it be so until September 2008.