VR-Zone

The mobile CPU/chipset segment has long been dominated by Intel - with nearly 90% market share. With the release of AMD's new Phenom II, Turion II and Athlon II quad, triple and dual core 45nm CPUs codenamed "Champlain", AMD is finally looking to throw a serious challenge to Intel platforms. While AMD can't boast of outright performance, the Phenom II X4 CPUs are introducing laptops in a price segment which previously only offered dual cores. As with the desktop market, AMD is once again going for price/performance wins, this time in the mobile market.

Reuters now reports that the new AMD platforms - Danube and Nile - are going to power no less than 109 mainstream notebook models. This is a two-fold improvement over the "over 50" number for 2009's Tigris platform, which was only a minor refresh at 65nm and K8.

Notebooks with AMD's latest CPUs will start shipping "as early as June". The notebook announcements from various top manufacturers - including HP, Acer and Dell - have been very promising, bringing multi-core performance to affordable prices.

AMD couldn't have timed it any better. Once again, ever since the Barcelona disaster, AMD is upholding and even beating release dates. Coupled with the back-to-school season, AMD might just capitalize on Intel's mobile CPU shortages.

Intel holds the clear upper hand in performance and efficiency/battery life, but it will be interesting to see how close AMD's new Champlain CPUs can get. Better price/performance, and graphics will be AMD's selling points. In the ultra-portable segment, however, AMD's dual-core Geneva CPU and Nile platform has every chance of surpassing Intel's lacklustre Atom offerings.

Reference: Techreport