San Francisco (CA) - While Intel is busy briefing developers, analysts, and journalists on its next-generation Intel Core Microarchitecture (ICM), AMD - never to be outdone - has set up camp in a nearby hotel to steal attendees away, and provide them with fresh details about its upcoming mobile processors.
This time, unlike AMD's previous attempts to crash Intel's party along the outer fringes, AMD brought some real news to San Francisco, including confirmation of the name of its first dual-core mobile processor. Dubbed Turion 64 X2, this new line will carry over the product designation from its dual-core desktop processor series. AMD product manager David Rooney said Turion X2-based notebook systems will be available in the second quarter of this year.
Among the other details Rooney was willing to confirm was that Turion 64 X2's power consumption will be within the range of its current mobile processors, as the company plans to once again target the "thin-and-light" market segment. Perhaps having learned a lesson from history with its more liberal application of the term "premium" to desktop dual-cores, AMD told us we can expect Turion 64 X2 - which will be using DDR2 memory - to carry just a small premium over its single-core processors for the same market.
No data is available yet regarding how much faster or cooler Turion 64 X2 is than Turion. Compared to Intel's Core Duo, however, there will be a few key distinctions, besides the obvious one: Turion 64 X2 will be 64-bit, while Core Duo remains 32-bit. 802.11n capability will be offered for Turion X2 notebooks this year and, according to Rooney, will also be available in dual-graphics Nvidia SLI configurations.
Rooney confirmed that AMD's goal with the new processor is achieve more design wins, and get more OEMs on board to integrate the processor into product plans. He declined to comment on the performance that can be expected from the chip. AMD currently boasts of about 10.9% market share in the notebook space.
