Chip manufacturer AMD are set to finally enter the netbook market and attempt to rival the Atom processor with a new addition to their Fusion range. They might be a little slow off the mark but, AMD have confirmed that they will release a DX11 capable CPU/GPU hybrid chip designed for netbooks sometime in 2011. Codenamed “Ontario”, this is a chip that has been specifically built for netbooks rather than just being a chip that is adapted for netbooks – a choice made by AMD to built the chip from scratch rather than compromise, indicating that AMD are at last embracing the netbook ‘boom’, even if they don’t instill confidence with their “netbook thing” comment:

“If we’d had a part, we’d have been in this space. We didn’t have a part so we went and worked on a part for the thin and light space. The plan is to come to market next year with a Fusion part that fits in it nicely in a netbook type thing.”  – Nigel Dessau, chief marketing officer for AMD.

Hopefully once 2011 comes along there will still be a strong market for the new AMD processor, as in let’s hope that AMD didn’t leave their ‘netbook type thing’ move too late.

via

2011 Release for Netbook Chip from AMD is a post from: Eee PC

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Intel has just officially announced the newest addition to its Pinetrail Atom family of processors, and as earlier reported, it is to be known as the N470, offering a slightly higher clock speed than usual Atom processors at 1.83GHz by default. It also comes with 512kb of L2 cache and support for DDR2 667 DRAM. All in, it’s the exact same chip as the N450 Pinetrail Atom, with an Integrated graphics chip, and the only significant difference (if you can call it that) is the faster clock. This will surely benefit in some applications, although it could possibly result in a higher power draw as well.

Via DigiTimes

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In September, Intel will be holding an event in San Francisco showing off a number on new technologies. One that’ll interest netbook users, is that netbooks will be shown with the N450 CPU. Today’s netbooks with an Intel CPU use either the N270 or N280 which is pretty much just as fast as the upcoming processor. However one main difference is that the newer processor consumes less power keeping the netbook cooler for longer and on for longer with improved battery life. The N450 is also smaller in size, meaning the netbooks taking advantage of the new technology will be thinner than current netbooks.

via

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While the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 was originally launched with Intel’s Atom processor and NVIDIA’s Ion chipset, it is also available with a Via Nano option now through Lenovo’s own web site. The new combination of Via’s Nano ULV 2250 processor and VIA Chrome9 HC3 graphics makes the overall price go down by $50 to $450 USD, and offers extra speed compared to Intel’s Atom chip in exchange for a little bit of reduction in battery life. If you’d rather have performance than endurance, you might want to look at this deal.

Lenovo via Engadget

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During its presentation at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, mobile phone processor maker ARM announced plans for a new chip called “Sparrow” which could offer a multi core solution to netbooks in the future. According to the company, Sparrow is a small, inexpensive chip that’s based on the same processor chip being used in the Palm Pre, and has about enough processing power as an ARM11, the chip used in Apple’s iPhone. Now, you might wonder, how can a processor based on something made for smartphones (as hinted by the last few sentences) be used to power netbooks in the future? ARM answered this in their MWC presentation by saying that a Cortex-A9 can deliver around 1500 DMIPS of processing capability per core, with up to four cores. They even showed a multiprocessing-capable version of the Symbian OS. Ubuntu for ARM is scheduled to go public in April 2009, so we might see the first fruits of ARM’s labor in retail with netbooks, then.

Via PC World

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AMD will be holding a Financial Analyst Day on Thursday and notebooks.com expect that this will be the time that AMD announce they will be entering the netbook component market, producing processors for them.

The flourishing netbook market could be just the place for AMD to boost their flagging sales of late and AMD are expected to try their luck and compete with the Intel Atom processors that dominate the netbook component market currently, with most netbook manufacurers using the Atom CPU.

Time for AMD to enter netbook market? is a post from: Eee PC

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