AMD plans to launch Netbooks Processors next year

As Intel’s Atom chips are still dominating the market Freescale, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, and a number of other companies with ARM-based chips could become a serious contributor in the Intel’s lead if smartbooks with integrated 3G and always-connected internet access start to take off.

AMD has been Intel's biggest rival but the company has not placed any importance in the netbook market. But it seems that is about to change. They plan to start taking the netbook market more seriously in 2011 and will be launching a new chip as part of its “Fusion” line to complete with Intel Atom processors.

Like the Intel Atom Pine Trail chip, AMD’s new processor will combine graphics and processing functions onto a single chip. The primary difference between AMD’s low power chip and the Intel Atom will be that AMD’s integrated graphics would be better. AMD owns graphics card maker ATI.

The AMD processor will be aimed primarily at notebooks with screen sizes of 12 inches or less. While entering the netbook space more than 3 years after the launch of the first netbook might seem like a bad idea, one of the biggest complaints people have about today’s netbooks is that they aren’t powerful enough to perform certain tasks.

Details : http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardware ... hp/3869796