AMD to flood Computex with mainstream Tigris laptops, reveal Danube?
By Thomas Ricker 
posted May 18th 2009 6:20AM
posted May 18th 2009 6:20AM
Besides being overwhelmed by Intel's CULV thin-and-lights at Computex, it looks like AMD will use the event to punish Engadget editors and readers with the launch of its Tigris platform. Since you've most likely supplanted any memory of Tigris with something useful, let us remind you that Tigris is AMD's mainstream laptop platform built around a dual-core 45-nm Caspian processor supporting 800MHz DDR2 memory and ATI M9x series graphics. The Commercial Times is also reporting that Computex might even bring a possible unveiling of AMD's next-generation Danube laptop platform featuring a quad-core Champlain processor with support for DDR3 memory. Unfortunately, Champlain won't be available for consumers until 2010 -- 2009 is all about Tigris laptops and the Athlon Neo thin-and-lights for AMD. Where's the AMD netbook? Oh they ceded that market to Intel a long time ago; a bad move now that Atom-based netbooks are plundering mainstream laptop marketshare that AMD was betting on with Tigris.
the name of the platform i.e. tigris seems to be interesting itself
What will be VERY interesting is whether or not the platform can handle games and other graphics intensive tasks well enough to entice a broader market than what netbooks are bringing in.
I think Engadget must be on Intel's bankroll. AMD having given up on netbooks long ago? Then what's Yukon for, hmm? Despite few design wins, it has potential. The next refresh should be a good deal speedier than any of the upcoming Atoms, and have similar power consumption. While I don't think they'll usurp Intel, as their marketing team aren't doing a very good job, and OEMs already have a lot of money tied up with Atom, they should make significant inroads. Via and soon ARM will be nipping at their heels.
meh, I'm waiting for the euphrates...
lol yeah, they are all after rivers.
Why can't they just a chip which processes everything and then sell it to everyone?
Put it a notebook PC with a great OLED 3D HD screen and for the once plz make it as rugged as possible.
Because if they did, you'd complain about the price, size and energy consumption.
How about they release those damn Phenom II X2's already?
Because they need some more cpu cores to fail, or they're improving their means of disabling cores since the P2 7xx and phenom 7xxx could have the disabled cores unlocked when ACC is enabled.
Soon actually, but it will be released as Atholon II X2. I don't like the naming scheme, but it is not my call.
Go AMD!
+1
I'm buying a laptop in two or three weeks. I'd wait but AMD took months for laptops containing their last puma platform to come to the market and I just can't wait months.
I'd wait just to see if prices go down. May be unlikely but right now I could have bought a laptop better than the one I got just last year for less than half the price.
AMD have ceded the "netbook" market to Intel?
When I last checked, the whole concept of a netbook was created by Intel as a way of artificially differentiating their low cost chips from the fat margin, high ASP Centrino land of notebooks to try to stop it from cannibalising sales.
Customers who buy netbooks want:
- a portable computer that runs Windows
- cheap cheap cheap
- small (but not too small - 10 to 13 inch screen and a decent keyboard)
Now to me, that's just a smaller, cheaper notebook with "just good enough" performance.
The other things that made a netbook different from a notebook (Linux, small SSD, no optical drive, no HDMI) seem to be gradually getting dropped as the manufacturers realise that actually people just want a cheap notebook that is easier to carry.
Because the Atom CPU sucks pretty badly, nobody would complain with more speed for the same amount of money.
As far as I see it, AMD have a perfect opportunity to dive into this nice middle ground with a low cost, low power dual core chip and decent ATI integrated graphics. If they price it slightly higher than Atom and don't put any restrictions on what the OEMs can do (cough cough, Intel), then it should do well.
However I've lost confidence in AMD to do anything as simple as that without cocking it up.
I agree
You know I thought AMD was kind of crazy for not taking ont he Netbook sector but after reading your post I think you are right. I never thought of it that way.
The netbook tradeoff, the one Atom pulls off rather well, is the balance between computing horsepower and battery life. Actually I *would* complain if I got more speed for the same amount of money... if my battery life was cut in two.
AMD have never managed to convince people they can compete in the notebook sector on anything but price. Specifically, Intel's Centrino marketing said "hey, we have our shit together on battery life" and AMD never challenged that. They just sad "yeah but ours is cheaper."
You know I thought this as well. With their integration of ATI graphics AMD should be able to create a pretty amazing chip for this market. Good post.
Bebop - Very good point... they definitely need to nail the battery life issue!
If they can get a dual core 45nm chip that's as low power as their single core 65nm then it'll be OK.
IIRC Tom's Hardware did a test that showed that an underclocked Athlon 64 was faster and lower power than an Atom, even though the CPU used more on its own, thanks to the ATI chipset which is really low power compared to the shitty Intel 945.
That said, I guess Intel will be refreshing the Atom platform fairly soon.
AMD needs better marketing. People, including salespersons in computer stores are largely ignorant about AMD CPUs.
Oh AMD, i havent seen you for a while. What have u been up to?
Is it just me or does 'Tigris' sound an awful lot like 'Tegra'??
That's what I initially read the title as in my RSS reader...
Will be interesting to see how these chips perform :)
Performance was never really an issue with the Puma cores, it was the power consumption and heat output that made them abysmal. If they get those factors under control and release them at higher clocks than current Puma cores, it could do well :)
I love competition. A game of thrones....
What do you think the AMD Neo is for Thomas Ricker? The dual core version will be coming later this year. Stop sounding like such like an Intel Fanboy and just deliver the news. People are complaining that AMD can't reach the same performance as Intel and run hot but now the have a 45nm process to do so. Now you want to AMD to mass produce subpar performing processors for a made up lineup called a "netbook" with extremely low margins. The Neo is for affordable ultraportables which I think will suit more peoples needs since it performs much better than an atom processor.
It's about damn time they get a competitive laptop chip one of these years... Its like they gave up the market. The most recent laptop chip they have is the Turion Ultra which is a 65nm dual-core "K8L" which is a basically the old K8 core with some minor power improvements pulled from the K10. This chip was released almost a year ago, and isn't even based on their latest architecture ie K10.
Hopefully this dual-core 45nm "Caspian" is more than just a die-shrink of the older Turion Ultra.
Also, the AMD Neo has better performance than the Atom, but it is only really competitive because a lot of the netbooks are using Intel's power-hungry 945GSE chipset. The single-core Neo has a TDP of 15W just for the CPU itself, whereas a similarly clocked Atom is around 2W. So a dual-core Atom sucking around 4 Watts with the new efficient chipset should be more powerful than the single-core Neo and use 1/2 the power or less.
Is the future dual-core Neo 45nm now? And where is Conesus the Neo replacement? What is Conesus's architecture?