14 DAY TRIAL // Little did we know about AMD's future plans before the Analyst Day. Just like a scared kid, the company sat down and squealed everything out. So, what is AMD cooking for us for the next year?
According to AMD, the company is ready to make a different approach to the computer market. The company has announced its plans to focus more on notebook platforms development. The AMD headlines are the "Puma" platform (to be released in 2008), and the first "Fusion" architecture mobile CPUs to see daylight in 2009.
The puma platform is based on AMD's mobile processor, the "Griffin". It is the first CPU designed from ground up as a mobile processor, and will integrate two 65-nanometer cores identical to those in the Turion X2 line. The cores will be linked to 1MB of L2 Cache each, for a 2MB pool. The CPU also features a refurbished northbridge, with HyperTransport3 and additional power management mechanisms for dynamical throttling.
The "Griffin" is likely to include a dual-channel DDR-2 memory controller with a pre-fetcher to take care of the mostly accessed data. The memory controller will lose the useless ability of working with both desktop, server and notebook memory modules.
The improved power management separates the CPU cores voltage supply from the northbrige power lines that allow each switch to an energy-saving mode when full power is not needed. For instance, when a graphics engine that is built into the chipset needs memory access, it can connect directly, without using the CPU cores. Moreover, both CPU cores can act and switch frequencies independently, and can go into a deep, 300 MHz "sleep" each time they are not needed.
Another essential component in the Puma platform is the "RS780M" chipset, commercially known as M780. It will be DirectX 10.1 compatible and will support PCI Express 2 for the addition of discrete GPUs in the M8x series. The new chipset will be the first to support "on-the-fly" switching between the integrated and discrete GPUs. For performance boosts, the chipset can use both graphing cores, just like a CrossFire link.
The SB700 southbridge chip will offer 12 USB 2.0 ports, two 1.1 USB ones, six SATA drives, parallel ATA and PCI add-ons. It will also feature HD audio support and power management options.