AMD has been silent in the mobile processor space for some time. Meanwhile, Intel has released several processors in the past few months, and even broke the mobile 1 GHz barrier. AMD has been silent, but diligently working on its own 1 GHz processor, among others.
Today AMD announced the Athlon 4 at four speeds ranging from 850 MHz to 1 GHz. AMD also introduced two mobile Duron processors running at 850 and 800 MHz. On paper, Intel may have some serious competition in a market the company has otherwise dominated.
Power conservation
For any mobile processor, power consumption is a big issue. AMD claims its PowerNow! technology will boost battery life 30 percent without impacting performance. Unlike Intel's SpeedStep, which drops processor performance when in battery optimized mode, PowerNow! automatically adjusts performance depending on the application.
Theoretically, the mobile 1 GHz Athlon 4 may be running anywhere between 500 MHz and 1 GHz, depending on the demands of the application. Meanwhile, Intel's Mobile Pentium III 1 GHz processor will drop to 700 MHz when in battery optimized mode, and users must manually force the processor to 1 GHz for demanding applications
The Athlon 4, 1 GHz processor uses less voltage as well, requiring between 1.2 and 1.4 volts depending on the speed. Conversely, Intel's 1 GHz requires 1.7 volts at maximum performance and 1.35 volts in battery optimized mode. Both AMD and Intel claim average power consumption of around 2 watts.
Performance
Using the 0.18-micron process, AMD has incorporated 37.5 million transistors into the Althon 4. That's almost 10 million more transistors than Intel's Mobile Pentium III 1 GHz processor. AMD also adds 384KB of onboard cache with pre-fetch technology to the mobile Athlon 4. Pre-fetch reads data from memory before the processor needs it to increase performance.
To further boost performance, ALi has developed the MAGiK1 M1647 chipset. With support for a 200 MHz front-side bus, it's the fasted bus speed in the mobile market. The chipset will also support DDR-SDRAM, which further increases system speed. For notebooks DDR-SDRAM is a better alternative, since it requires only 2.5 volts, compared with PC133 SDRAM, which requires 3.3 volts.
The bottom line
On paper, the AMD mobile Athlon 4 processor looks impressive and poses a significant threat to Intel's position in the mobile market. If the desktop Althlon is any indication of the AMD architecture's performance, then the mobile Athlon 4 will surely impress.
When you consider the price, it sounds even better. The 1 GHz mobile AMD Athlon 4 costs $425, compared with Intel's Mobile Pentium III 1 GHz processor, which currently sells for $722.
With Compaq and HP committed to using the new processor in upcoming notebooks, the door is open for AMD to gain market share in the high-performance notebook market.
