There’ve been rumors that AMD would be getting into the low-cost ultraportable chip-making business. And now it looks like AMD’s new CEO Dirk Meyer has pretty much confirmed it. Meyer says the company has no plans to start making chips for cellphones or mobile internet devices. But low-cost laptops are another story.
The announcement (if you can call it that, no actual products have been announced) makes sense. After all, AMD is still a much smaller company than Intel, and it doesn’t make sense to stray too far from the company’s core business model: making chips for desktop and laptop computers.
While there’s no real information on AMD’s planned netbook chip, I’m going to make a wild prediction that AMD is working on a cheap, energy saving processor. I wouldn’t say no to a multi-core chip, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
Update: Register Hardware reports that AMD is using the codename “Bobcat” for its upcoming low-power chip. Here are some of the specs, according to Register Hardware:
- 1GHz clock speed
- 128KB of L1 cache
- 256KB of L2 cache
- 800MHz HyperTransport link
- Support for 400MHz DDR2
- Will consume 8W of power or less
- Will be placed in an 812 pin, 27 square millimeter BGA package
Update 2: AMD’s chief of marketing says the company will not be making a netbook processor. So there. The company is definitely maybe not getting involved.