Right now, in terms of the netbook and nettop market, it’s Intel everywhere. AMD is now urging OEMs to think outside the Intel box.
AMD is campaigning to PC makers to consider using its Yukon platform before turning straight to Intel’s Atom when designing a low-cost, power efficient system.
While the Yukon at 25 W thermal design power does demand more juice than the Atom, but in return does provide appreciably more computational power, which AMD claims to deliver “a full PC experience,” -- one that’s obviously more multimedia-centric than the current batch of Atom-powered machines.
AMD representatives explained to Digitimes that systems built using the Yukon platform won’t be bound to any hardware or form factor restrictions -- which have been reported to be part of Intel’s Atom program. OEMs are free to make Yukon systems, including notebooks, with any panel size, expansion slots or memory capacities.
So far the AMD Yukon platform has found its way into the all-in-one BenQ nScreen i91. Sharing the same computer-in-an-LCD form factor as an iMac, the nScreen i91 features an 18.5-inch display, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD and an ATI Radeon X1200 chipset.
Yukon will be in notebooks soon, perhaps first in the upcoming HP Pavilion dv2 -- a 12.1-inch notebook that’s less than an inch thick and 4 lbs heavy. It’s certainly not competing in the same physical space as the smaller Atom netbooks, but it’ll be another option for those looking at an ultra-portable.
