AMD CEO Dirk Meyer recently revealed that his “company is currently developing a platform that features lower-power, smaller-sizes, more complete functionality, and a cheaper price than Intel’s Atom for netbooks,” according to DigiTimes. Sounds great. The fact that AMD owns ATI should make for an awesome mish-mash of processors and graphics. So let’s start rolling these things out, eh?
Whoops, not so fast. The platform won’t be ready until next year.
This is a serious problem for AMD. Intel’s been cleaning up in the netbook space for over a year now and AMD is nowhere to be found. Well, that’s not totally true. It does have its Neo platform in HP’s dv2, but that’s about it. With Intel purposely hamstringing the graphics setups on the Atom platform and VIA still in the early stages of trying to gain market share, AMD could have and should have had a potent CPU + ATi GPU setup on the market months ago.
Instead “samples are expected to be delivered to partners in 2010,” which means that even if they’re delivered in January, we won’t see them in consumer products for a few months after that. Meyer noted that the line between netbooks and notebooks will continue to blur and that the term “netbook” will eventually fade away, so this new platform will be a notebook platform, not a netbook platform. So basically, by the time nobody says “netbook” any more, AMD will have its Atom killer ready.
AMD CEO reveals Atom-beater expected for 2010 [DigiTimes]
Yea, and Intel will have a whole new and improved Atom more than likely too.
AMD – Too little, too late.
How about calling it the “Atom Smasher” instead of “Atom killer”
How about calling it nothing. By the time they get shipping quantities, Intel’s atom replacement will be here.
“The next generation of the Atom is codenamed “Pineview” which utilizes the “Lincroft” system-on-a-chip architecture and is used in the “Moorestown” platform. It is scheduled to be launched in Q4 2009 for a dual core and Q1 2010 for single core.[29] It will be used in Netbook/Nettop systems, and feature a system-on-chip (SOC) with an integrated single-channel DDR2 memory controller and an integrated graphics core. It will feature HyperThreading, and is to be manufactured on a 45 nm or 32 nm process. The new system-on-a-chip design will use half the power of the older Menlow platform. This reduced overall power consumption and size will make the platform more desirable for use in smartphones and other mobile internet devices.
In addition to launching the Lincroft platform, Intel updated the existing platform in the first half of 2009. An “N280″ Diamondville CPU, running at a core clock speed of 1.66 GHz and a 667 MHz front side bus was released, which would be paired with a new “GN40″ graphics chipset in place of the Intel GMA 950 which is used with the N270. The resultant system would have a higher per-unit cost than the N270. The Asus 1000HE uses a N280 CPU but not the improved GN40 graphics chipset. Intel CEO Paul Otellini has stated that, along with other improvements, Atom (specifically Silverthorne) will shrink to the 32 nm process in 2009. It has been suggested that the Atom will be the first Intel chip to transition to 32 nm due to its small size and low complexity.”
AMD, the boat has sailed on this one buddy. You lose. You need to completely replace your marketing and product management departments. No vision.