AMD Campaigning Yukon as Intel Atom Alternative

By Marcus Yam
published

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 hoping to make its offerings more attractive to OEMs

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.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
25 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Master Exon
    This is good news.
    Reply
  • m3kt3k
    AMD fails to understand using hot chicks wont work unless they actually put out. If both of those chicks would spend the night I MIGHT think about going back to using AMD chips. I dunno the Intel chicks were hot and DID put out.
    Reply
  • jonpaul37
    HOORAY CHICKS PUTTING OUT!!!
    Reply
  • hairycat101
    m3kt3kAMD fails to understand using hot chicks wont work unless they actually put out. If both of those chicks would spend the night I MIGHT think about going back to using AMD chips. I dunno the Intel chicks were hot and DID put out.
    I might buy AMD if they just get up and shake their money makers for me... Then again, I might buy AMD CPU's anyways.
    Reply
  • hellwig
    Oof, does anyone remember the old IBM Cyrix girls, yikes!

    I think AMD bought into the Steve Jobs "no one wants netbooks" hype a little early, and now they're trying to get back in the game.

    I must have also missed something. Wasn't the problem with the Atom the fact that it used a really old and really inefficient chipset that consumed a lot of power. Did they resolve that for the mobile chipset they're now using? 25W for Yukon doesn't seem that bad.
    Reply
  • Netbooks are teh suck, SRSLY, the screen is too small, the keyboard suxx, and they're pathetically slow. AMD got it right, I'm probably getting one of these when they come out.
    Reply
  • jaragon13
    NetbookHaterNetbooks are teh suck, SRSLY, the screen is too small, the keyboard suxx, and they're pathetically slow. AMD got it right, I'm probably getting one of these when they come out.Lol,maybe.

    If these are most popular in netbook form,they will only be competing with Nvidia's Ion platform - wouldn't Nvidia helping Intel be such a bitch,since all Intel does is whine at Nvidia,or what?
    Reply
  • radguy
    Netbooks are pretty kewl devices exspecialy considering the money. They run xp fine and there keyboards are slowly getting to be pretty good. Intels atom processor restictions have forced the netbook market to what it has become. The next best option to a netbook is the lenovos x61 but that costs at min 650 if you use the coupon. For 350 dollars you can get an msi wind u120. Why can't I get something in the middle for $500. AMD might be on to something
    Reply
  • Area51
    How can you compare two products with such deferent TDP's? They are not the same class. I hope that someday AMD will have a comparable solution to Atom, but until then it's silly to position this solution against atom at this time.
    Reply
  • Area51: I believe that 25w TDP includes the chipset(25w is on par with their regular notebook chips for just the CPU), so if atom + chipset is using 15 to 20, then 25 isn't so bad. Atom is too slow for a laptop type device(like a netbook), but it would be great in a cellphone or PDA. You just can't do much with a netbook, after the novelty wears off, you realize that it's kind of lame, and you wish you could do more with it.
    Reply