AMD is to offer "Puma," its first chip platform aimed squarely at high performance, low-power mobile computing. In competing directly with Intel's UMPC- and Laptop-destined chipsets, as outlined last month in Beijing, AMD confirms that the entire industry anticipates that a handheld and ultraportable devices will be the toast of 2010.
The chipset, which includes GPU technology acquired with last year's ATI buy, will be first embodied in next summer's notebooks, according to AMD. Like Intel, it wants to have its cake and eat it too, maximizing performance while minimizing drain.
On the one hand, the chipmakers want to reduce power consumption, but on the other hand, they want to deliver the high-performance integrated graphics that Vista and gaming demands. ATI's mobility Radeons are the bee's knees in this regard, and will likely compare well with Santa Rosa's GMA X3000 video setup, itself a big advance on previous integrated GPU horrors from Intel.
