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Thursday, June 26, 2008

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AMD Coming to the LV / ULV Space

- Rob Bushway

Most folks have noticed AMD quite absent from the Low Voltage / Ultra-Low Voltage space, thus the reason you don't see them in the likes of Motion Computing's LE1700, Fujitsu's U810, Lenovo's X61, OQO's Model 02, and Dell's Latitude XT. With their most recent PUMA announcement, AMD is taking mobile computing seriously; and now with their upcoming Shrike platform, they plan to enter the thin and light space with a vengeance.

Shrike is AMD's first substantiation of their Fusion architecture, which combine the GPU and CPU, along with southbridge, on to a single piece of silicon.

Shrike will begin hitting the market the 2nd half of 2009. Considering how fast the ultra-portable space is moving right now, that is eon's away. It will certainly be good to see another player enter this space and will bring some good competition for Intel and Via.

Shrike will not compete against Intel's Atom or Via's Isaiah. However, I wouldn't rule them out of that space, either.

For those wondering, Shrike is a passerine bird that impales its' prey on thorns, which helps them to devour the flesh.

Hardware | AMD

6/26/2008 8:07 AM MST

AMD Coming to the LV / ULV Space Comments [3] | Digg This | del.icio.us | Citations

Thursday, June 26, 2008 9:53:11 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

I would be curious to know your thoughts on why "Shrike will not compete against Intel's Atom or Via's Isaiah." From the slide it looks like it is focused on the same market. Is there something about it which would eliminate the Shrike from consideration for a UMPC (an OQO for example)? Or is it just that you anticipate the Atom and Nano will be obsolete by the 2nd half of 2009 and the Shrike will have to compete against the Intel Proton and the Via Pico?

Dave P

Thursday, June 26, 2008 11:21:02 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

ArsTechnica has looked into this curious move by AMD as well.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080619-amd-may-be-planning-its-own-cpu-to-compete-with-nano-atom.html

If Shrike is the same processor that is noted in that post, the big undoer for me would be the 8W TDP. Comapred to the Atom and Nano, that's just guzzling down power like a Hummer. I'd suspect that AMD does have something a bit further down the pipeline that is more power conscious and this is only a stop gap measure to make sure that they're not an afterthought when manufacturers start projects.

Of course, this is all on the x86 kind of platform. ARM may end up dominating this space if it gets the right kind of software support, and it's already halfway there a la iPhone.

Hoo-Chuan Tan

Thursday, June 26, 2008 12:52:33 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

>If Shrike is the same processor that is noted in that post, the big undoer for me would be the 8W TDP. Comapred to the Atom and Nano, that's just guzzling down power like a Hummer.

If you read any comments on news sites that reported that story, you would know that the 8W TDP is the amount used including the northbridge. Atom with the northbridge is greater than 20W TDP.

Usagimaru

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