X-bit labs

AMD Confirms Low-Power 64-bit Chips for Notebooks.

Category: Mobile

by Anton Shilov

[ 05/06/2004 | 03:19 PM ]

AMD today officially confirmed two new additional SKUs in the company’s 64-bit lineup – a couple of new Mobile Athlon 64 chips that will fight with higher-end Pentium 4 Min terms of performance.

Today’s Mobile Athlon 64 microprocessors for notebooks from AMD are available in three flavors depending on performance level in general and clock-speed in particular; these are models 2800+, 3000+ and 3200+ functioning at 1.60GHz, 1.80GHz and 2.0GHz respectively. The CPUs have 1MB of full-speed on-die L2 cache and single-channel DDR SDRAM memory controller, like the majority of other AMD Athlon 64 processors in 754-pin packaging.

The Mobile Athlon 64 2700+ and processor is expected to operate at 1.60GHz, but feature only 512KB of L2 cache. 1MB cache is overwhelmingly large for the majority of software applications available today, therefore, reduced size of the on-die memory bank is not likely to decrease performance of the part dramatically. There is also Mobile Athlon 64 2800+ in the lineup.

Even though AMD positions its Mobile Athlon 64 chips for the market of extremely powerful notebooks, thermal design power of Mobile AMD Athlon 64 processors is 62W – really lot for mobile central processing units. Thanks to PowerNow! And Cool’n’Quiet technologies, the chips consume significantly less electricity under typical load. Nevertheless, AMD still decided to create a version of the Mobile Athlon 64 with thermal design power of about 35W that is likely to be used on truly mobile machines that require low power consumption and extended battery life amid high performance.

Intel’s Pentium M processors specifically tailored for notebooks consume up to 24.5W at 1.70GHz. Intel’s Pentium 4-M processors at 2.40GHz and 2.50GHz typically consume 30W and 35W respectively under maximum load. Mobile Pentium 4 processors that are designed for DTR laptops have TDP of 60W – 76W at clock-speeds from 2.40GHz to 3.20GHz.

Advanced Micro Devices is also preparing 90nm versions of its Mobile Athlon 64 processors. According to the company’s roadmaps, code-named Odessa CPUs is scheduled for introduction the second half of the year. Already in the first half of 2005 AMD is planning to roll-out a microprocessor internally called Oakville that will also be made using 90nm process technology.

The new low-power mobile AMD Athlon 64 processor models 2800+ and 2700+ are available immediately worldwide for thin and light mobile PCs. All pricing is in 1000-unit quantities. The low-power mobile AMD Athlon 64 processor models 2800+ and 2700+ are priced at $241 and $209, respectively.