AMD touts lean, mean 'Centrino-busting' chip

AMD is coming out with its own Centrino.

The chipmaker is prepping an energy-efficient laptop chip, code-named Griffin, as well as a platform based around Griffin called Puma, (similar to Intel's Centrino) that should allow AMD to better compete in the rapidly growing laptop market.

Griffin will go into mass production towards the end of the year and Puma-based laptops sporting the chips will hit in mid-2008, according to AMD fellow Maurice Steinman.

Intel has produced chips sporting architectures optimised for laptops since 2003 and has come out with new versions at a somewhat regular pace. Partly as a result, Intel has maintained a larger market share in laptops over AMD than in other markets.

After Griffin's release, AMD will follow with Fusion, a chip that integrates graphics into the processor core in 2009, he said. Fusion will first appear in laptops. (Last year, AMD said Fusion would come out in 2008 or 2009.)

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Griffin is AMD's first chip specifically designed for laptops, said Steinman. The chip maker sells chips tweaked for laptops now but these products are effectively just more power-efficient versions of the other chips AMD sells into other markets, he said.

By adopting a new architecture, the company says it can cut power consumption further without worrying as much about making changes that might affect how the architecture works in the server world, for instance.

Griffin will be able to drop to slower speeds when full performance isn't needed. Currently, AMD chips can drop to 800MHz. The cores in Griffin, independent of each other, will be able to drop to one-eighth the chip's stated speed. Thus, if it's a 2.4GHz chip, a single core will be able to drop to 300MHz to conserve power.

Steinman said: "You can get some real work done at those lower frequencies."

Griffin, though, won't be able to accommodate as much memory as a server chip, he added. He didn't specify how much less but said the chip was designed for laptop-size memory loads, not the massive amounts of memory servers can require. Again, this architectural difference saves power.

The chip will initially come out on the 65-nanometer process. Each core will contain a 1MB cache.

Puma, meanwhile, will continue the power management theme by coming with a feature, called PowerXpress that shuts off the discreet graphics processor in laptops when they are running on batteries. In the unplugged mode, laptops will run on the graphics capabilities in the chipset.

Most laptops, Steinman conceded, actually don't come with a discreet graphics chip but it will save power for those that do.

Michael Kanellos writes for CNET News.com