AMD to Release Centrino Competitor in 2008

AMD is set to start shipping a competitor to Intel's Centrino processor by the end of this year, which it is calling Puma.

The chipset has similar energy efficiency characteristics to Intel's, and will start appearing in notebooks by the middle of next year. AMD has mainly concentrated on desktop systems where it has seen considerable success.

However, to continue its growth, it needs to take on Intel in a market where its rival has maintained supremacy. It will start this process with Puma and continue it with Fusion, a chip that integrates graphics onto the core, by 2009.

The new chipset includes functionality that allows for power conservation and longer battery life. For example, the clock speed slows when applications require less CPU power, and features within the chip allow for unused portions to "sleep" while others are busy.

While the company has "mobile" processors now, technically they are just scaled down versions of the same architecture used in desktop systems, the company says. Puma heralds a completely different architecture altogether.

"With increased performance and power efficiency, Puma represents the company's first explicitly mobile platform," Endpoint analyst Roger Kay said. "It's safe to assume that this offering is just the first of what will be turn out to be a stream of evolving products based on the company's new open-platform mobile technology."