AMD to inject graphics grunt into ‘thin and light’ notebooks

AMD has ceded the netbook market to Intel and its Atom processor, but now has its eye on a larger and more profitable segment of the mobilescape: the next wave of ‘thin and light’ ultra-portable notebooks.

The cornerstone of its strategy will be a new platform codenamed Yukon, due for launch in the first half of 2009 using a 45nm dual-core processor codenamed Conesus.

Conesus will also be available as a single-core chip, but AMD sees performance as being paramount to the success of thin and light notebooks by delivering what spokesman Michael Taylor describes as “the full PC experience” rather than the pared-down functionality of a netbook.

Speaking in a conference call to outline AMD’s processor roadmap, Taylor confirmed that Yukon’s target is “the slim form factor with a larger screen. Not a 10- or 11- or 12-inch screen.”

This pretty much rules out netbooks, which currently top out at the 12 inch screen of the Dell Inspiron Mini 12. Thin-and-light notebooks such as the MacBook Air, HP’s Voodoo Envy, Dell’s Latitude E4300  and Lenovo’s ThinkPad X300 typically sport a screen of 13.3 inches, although some models (like the Latitude E4200 and ThinkPad X200) shrink this down to 12.1 inches.

Although AMD revealed few specifics about Yukon during the call the chips are clearly meant to go toe-to-toe with Intel’s 45nm ‘pint-sized Penryn’ processors, which are the powerplant for all of the above-named notebooks.
Yukon’s ‘secret sauce’ will be its graphics capabilities, with the package containing a discrete graphics chip based on technology developed by ATI.

Taylor allowed that Yukon could find its way into some netbooks if vendors chose to do so, in the same way that Intel has no control over manufacturers dropping its dual-core Atom desktop chip into a beefed-up netbook.

AMD’s presentation included a ‘mini-notebook’, which was described as being for ‘basic Web’ use and having gained ‘traction as (an) Nth device in mature markets’ but ignored the conventional netbook tags of being low-cost and also for education and emerging markets.

However, Yukon’s 25 watt ceiling would be a challenge for even the most creative engineer, given that the Atom N270 netbook chip and chipset weigh in at just 8.5 watts.

Conesu it will carry 1MB of cache and support DDR2 memory. A second-gen Geneva chip is slated for 2010, which will double the cache and switch to DDR3. 2011, AMD says, will see the platform shift to 32nm with the Ontario chip, which will integrate the GPU into the chip as part of AMD’s ‘accelerated processing unit’ architecture.