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post #21 of 334
3/10/05 at 9:39am
Thread Starter 
Text from that press release...

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/V...~95256,00.html

Quote:
AMD Ushers In A New Era In 64-Bit Mobile Computing With AMD Turion™ 64 Mobile Technology

— Acer, Fujitsu Siemens and Packard Bell Among Leading Manufacturers Expected to Launch Notebook PCs Worldwide in Coming Months —

SUNNYVALE, CALIF -- March 10, 2005 --AMD (NYSE: AMD) today introduced AMD Turion™ 64 mobile technology, the latest in a succession of computing innovations based on the industry-leading AMD64 architecture. AMD Turion 64 mobile technology is uniquely optimized to bring award-winning AMD64 performance to thinner and lighter notebook PCs with longer battery life, enhanced security, and compatibility with the latest graphics and wireless solutions, both today and tomorrow.

Together with industry-leading partners, AMD enables a best-in-class ecosystem of open industry-standard technologies, helping PC manufacturers to deliver feature-rich systems that satisfy the variety of ways in which people use their notebooks.

“By embracing a broad partner community and industry standards, AMD is both providing choice and stimulating innovation,” said Roger Kay, vice president of Client Computing at IDC.

“We have unleashed 64-bit mobile performance, allowing business professionals and on-the-go consumers to explore the freedom of mobile productivity with AMD Turion 64 mobile technology,” said Marty Seyer, corporate vice president and general manager, Microprocessor Business Unit, Computation Products Group, AMD. “This is just the first of many innovations that we are planning to pioneer with this new product family made for mobility, choice and best-in-class notebook designs.”

Leading global manufacturers, hardware vendors and software suppliers have expressed support for AMD Turion 64 mobile technology. "Fujitsu welcomes AMD Turion 64 mobile technology innovation, and we congratulate AMD on their success," said Mr. Kazuhiro Igarashi, general manager, Mobile PC Division, Personal Business Group for Fujitsu Limited.

Business professionals and consumers worldwide can expect to see notebooks based on AMD Turion 64 mobile technology starting later this month in retail stores and through commercial distribution channels. The first systems are expected from Acer worldwide and Fujitsu Siemens Computers throughout Europe.

“We have had a great deal of success with our Ferrari branded notebooks based on AMD64 technology,” said Walter Deppeler, senior corporate vice president, Acer Inc. “We look forward to continued success with our forthcoming notebook designs based on AMD Turion 64 mobile technology.”

"As the leading European IT provider, we offer our customers world-class computing technology," said Herbert Schönebeck, Vice President Business Unit Consumer, Fujitsu Siemens Computers. "We are introducing innovative consumer notebook PCs based on AMD Turion 64 mobile technology to provide our customers efficient platforms to connect from virtually anywhere."

In addition, ASUS, Averatec, BenQ, MSI and Packard Bell are among the leading, global computer manufacturers who have indicated they will support AMD Turion 64 mobile technology.

Availability
AMD Turion 64 mobile technology models ML-37, ML-34, ML-32, ML-30, MT-34, MT-32, and MT-30 are available immediately worldwide.

In order to help consumers and business professionals simplify their notebook purchasing decisions, AMD Turion 64 mobile technology uses a new series of model numbers designed to provide a simple designation of both relative performance and degree of mobility within the processor family. The two letters of this model number indicate processor class, with the second letter designating increasing degree of mobility, as measured by power consumption.* As the second letter approaches the end of the alphabet, “higher” letters indicate greater mobility. The numbers indicate relative performance within the processor class. Higher numbers indicate higher relative performance among the AMD Turion 64 mobile technology family.

Pricing
AMD Turion 64 mobile technology models ML-37, ML-34, ML-32, ML-30, MT-34, MT-32, and MT-30 are priced at $354, $263, $220, $184, $268, $225 and $189 respectively, in 1,000-unit quantities. For pricing details please visit: http://www.amd.com/pricing.

About AMD Turion 64 Mobile Technology
AMD Turion 64 mobile technology is made for mobility without compromise. The technology is designed to be the most advanced family of 32- and 64-bit Windows®-compatible processors available for mobile PCs, enabling thinner and lighter notebooks plus compatibility with today’s most popular wireless and graphics solutions. AMD Turion 64 mobile technology also features award-winning AMD64 performance, readiness for tomorrow’s 64-bit applications, security with Enhanced Virus Protection enabled by Windows XP Service Pack 2, and AMD PowerNow!™ technology for extended system battery life.

About AMD64
AMD64 evolves the industry-standard 32-bit x86 architecture to support the demanding 64-bit environment and enables next-generation functionality and productivity today. AMD designed the AMD64 platform to allow end users to enjoy reliable, best-in-class performance on the 32-bit software they own today while preparing for a seamless transition to high-performance 64-bit applications. Designed from the ground up to support multi-core capability, future AMD64 dual-core processors will amplify the elegance and power of AMD’s current single-core solutions. The AMD64 architecture is also designed to enhance the security of your computing environment by integrating Enhanced Virus Protection technology enabled by advanced anti-virus features in Windows® XP Service Pack 2 and the upcoming Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1.

Since the introduction of the AMD64 architecture in 2003, the AMD Opteron™ processor for servers and workstations and the AMD Athlon™ 64 processors for desktop and notebook computers have earned more than 80 awards for innovation and performance and the support of more than 2,000 OEMs, hardware and software developers, system builders, and distributors.

AMD64 technology was natively designed to support upcoming industry-standard, multi-core processors for servers, workstations, desktop PCs and notebooks, as a natural extension of AMD64 technology with Direct Connect Architecture.

About AMD
AMD (NYSE:AMD) designs and produces innovative microprocessors, Flash memory devices and low-power processor solutions for the computer, communications and consumer electronics industries. AMD is dedicated to delivering standards-based, customer-focused solutions for technology users, ranging from enterprises and governments to individual consumers. For more information visit www.amd.com.

* Based on the general assumption that lower power consumption enables longer system battery life and, therefore, greater mobility.
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post #22 of 334
3/10/05 at 9:45am
Thread Starter 
An article from AnandTech.com...

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=2374

Quote:
AMD Unveils Turion 64 Mobile Technology: A Rebranded Mobile Athlon 64
March 10th, 2005
Anand Lal Shimpi

Intel’s Centrino brand has developed extremely well since its introduction less than two years ago. You could go as far as to say that Centrino has been Intel’s quickest zero-to-success brand that we’ve ever seen in the history of the company. A very large part of the success is due to the strong technology behind Centrino.

AMD doesn’t have the resources of Intel, that’s plain and simple. They have done an excellent job with their K8 architecture, but for AMD to devote additional resources to developing another architecture, strictly mobile oriented, it’s just not possible at this time. At the same time, AMD’s Athlon 64 is far more suited for mobile environments than Intel’s Pentium 4 ever was, so the need for a mobile specific architecture isn’t as great for AMD as it was for Intel. So when AMD announced their Turion 64 “Mobile Technology” we had a feeling it would be something very similar to their desktop Athlon 64s, today AMD confirmed that.

Much like Intel’s Centrino, AMD is referring to their Turion 64 as a “Mobile Technology” and not just a microprocessor platform. AMD has seen the success of Intel’s Centrino Mobile Technology and is hoping to capitalize on some of that success. Unlike Centrino however, Turion 64 doesn’t rely on AMD-supplied chips to receive the branding. AMD will provide the Turion 64 processors, but chipsets can be provided by a number of vendors as can the LAN and wireless controllers. AMD is far less restricting on the components that make up Turion 64 enabled notebooks, which means that they will inevitably be cheaper than Centrino platforms, but it also means that they may not be as power efficient as Centrino platforms - it’s a tradeoff that AMD honestly had to make, as they are far from being in Intel’s position.

The Turion 64 processor is basically a 90nm mobile Athlon 64, so all of the architectural features of the Athlon 64 make their way to the Turion 64. One advantage that the Turion 64 has is that with an on-die memory controller, AMD can potentially offer lower memory controller power consumption than Intel.

The Turion 64 is based on the latest revision E4 of the K8 core, meaning that it supports SSE3 instructions as well as lower power states. The Turion 64 line also supports AMD’s PowerNow technology (known as Cool’N’Quiet on the desktop), which allows for clock speed (and voltage) modulation between 1.0GHz and the processor’s maximum frequency based on load.

The Turion 64 will be available in both 1MB L2 and 512KB L2 cache models, but both models will only support a 64-bit (single channel) DDR400 memory controller. The first Turion 64s will be available in speeds ranging from 1.6GHz up to 2.0GHz.

With the Turion 64 AMD is introducing a new model numbering system to help differentiate various Turion CPUs from one another (and to separate the Turion 64 line from the Athlon 64 line):

As the chart above shows, currently AMD has two Turion lines - a 35W TDP and a 25W TDP line (note that Intel’s Pentium M 755 has a 22W TDP but they are measured differently from AMD). The second letter in the model number indicates the level of power consumption of the processor, with “higher” letters denoting lower power consumption (e.g. MT-34 has lower power consumption than the ML-34). AMD is clearly doing a bit of chip binning, with chips capable of running at lower voltages (and thus lower power) being set aside for the Turion 64 line. This isn’t much of a surprise as they do a similar thing on the server side to create their low power Opteron HE and EE chips (50W and 30W respectively).

The two digits, as usual, indicate clock speed/cache size and other performance impacting features.

Performance, Availability and Final Words

Despite the fact that the Turion 64 line was just announced, it turns out that we actually did a Pentium M vs. Turion 64 performance comparison about a year ago. When Intel launched the Dothan Pentium M core, we compared it to the Socket-745 Athlon 64 2800+ (1.8GHz) - which is very similar to the Turion 64 ML-32 (1.8GHz/512KB). While the performance comparison isn't identical to a Turion 64 notebook, it should give you an idea of how competitive the Turion 64 will be performance-wise, with the Pentium M.

As you can see, AMD should have no problem remaining performance competitive with the Pentium M, but there are obviously many other factors that aren't depicted in the article mentioned above. Mainly we have no idea how the Turion 64 will fare in a power consumption comparison, or how competitive it is from a form factor standpoint. AMD has been aiming at the thin-and-light market from the start with Turion 64, but there's no guarantee that the Turion 64 can get into as thin and as light notebooks as Centrino. AMD has always been one step behind Intel when it came to chip packaging, which carries a lot of weight in form factor discussions.

AMD lists Turion 64 chip availability as immediately with the following price structure:

"AMD Turion 64 mobile technology models ML-37, ML-34, ML-32, ML-30, MT-34, MT-32, and MT-30 are priced at $354, $263, $220, $184, $268, $225 and $189 respectively, in 1,000-unit quantities."

Acer and Fujitsu will have Turion 64 notebooks available by the end of the month. AMD also announced that: "ASUS, Averatec, BenQ, MSI and Packard Bell are among the leading, global computer manufacturers who have indicated they will support AMD Turion 64 mobile technology." So it sounds like we will see a few others with Turion 64 platforms, but still a few short of a complete list of partners.

With the Turion 64, AMD is doing more of a marketing repackaging of their Athlon 64 than anything else. While it's going to be tough to best Intel's Centrino in overall packaging, the Turion 64 may just be close enough for AMD to be happy. It all boils down to implementation, and it'll be tough for Turion to break into the more exotic Centrino markets but it shouldn't have a problem competing in the more mainstream priced Centrino notebooks.
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post #23 of 334
3/10/05 at 9:48am
Thread Starter 
Pics from that same AnandTech.com article...







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post #24 of 334
3/10/05 at 9:57am
Thread Starter 
Article from extremetech.com...

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1774693,00.asp

Quote:
AMD Launches Turion Notebook Chip
By Mark Hachman

Advanced Micro Devices is scheduled to launch its 64-bit Turion mobile processor Thursday morning, allowing the chipmaker to penetrate the thin-and-light laptop market where Intel's Centrino processor holds sway.

AMD's launch will be backed by several of AMD's traditional partners, including Acer and Fujitsu-Siemens, who will ship Turion-based notebooks this month. Other OEMs like Hewlett-Packard may announce their own designs later in the quarter, AMD executives said.

Using three key metrics – the price of the chip, its performance, and its battery life – AMD executives expect the Turion to be a winner. Although the chip's smaller cache size doesn't offer OEMs the chance to perform an apples-to-apples comparison with the Pentium M, AMD has used the discrepancy to price the chip at a slight discount to Intel's notebook processor. In its own tests, AMD found that the performance of the Turion outperformed an identically-clocked Pentium M by 6 to 33 percent. AMD wasn't able to provide battery-life numbers, but one OEM source said his company has been told that the Turion chip will offer "comparable" battery life to the Pentium M.

"We're extremely pleased by the overwhelming positive response we've received from the OEMs," said Bahr Mahony, division marketing manager for AMD's mobile processing group.

That's good news for AMD, which has struggled to crack the thin-and-light market with its Mobile Athlon 64 and Athlon XP-M microprocessors, even as the company's overall market share has climbed to a two-year high. AMD's launch partners will include Acer, Asus, Averatec, BenQ, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, MSI, Packard Bell and Sharp.

Part of the challenge is that Intel offers both the Pentium M processor as well as the chipset and wireless module, tied up inside a "Centrino" brand that has been backed by millions of dollars in advertising. Don MacDonald, who orchestrated the Centrino campaign for Intel, said in an interview last week that the company's use of the Blue Man Group to sell the mobile brand was hotly debated within the company. In the end, however, the ads resonated strongly with consumers, and Intel retained the entertainers.

AMD does not plan to offer a supporting chipset or wireless module, as Intel's Centrino platform does, allowing OEMs to buy their parts from one source. Although Intel offered discounts and other incentives to purchase all three components from the company, Intel's early inability to produce a competitive wi-Fi chipset forced OEMs to turn to Atheros, Broadcom, and other suppliers. The ability to select their own package of parts is attractive to OEMs, Mahony said.

"We absolutely do not limit their choice, and very much value their freedom to choose," Mahony said.

The new 754-pin Turion chips will range in speed from 1.6- to 2.0-GHz, with level-2 cache sizes of 512 Kbytes and 1 megabyte – one-quarter and one-half the size of the level-2 cache found on the latest Pentium M, respectively.

The new Turion will initially ship in two configurations, using a new version of its "model number" performance abstractions: the ML series, designed for a more robust 35-watt notebooks, and the MT series, which will meet a 25-watt thermal constraint. Future versions of the Turion processor will use different designations, depending on their power consumption: a hypothetical "MA" processor will consume the most power and provide the shortest battery life, while a "MZ" Turion chip would consume a minimum of power. AMD executives did not indicate how many "M" steppings it might introduce, or the upper and lower thermal limits.

"We saw and heard from people that nobody did an effective job in capturing battery life in their [naming] methodology," Mahony said.

Two-digit performance numbers will accompany the power ratings, providing an abstract synopsis of the Turion's performance. AMD's Turion scorecard includes the ML-37, ML-34, ML-32, ML-30, MT-34, MT-32, and MT-30, ranging in price from $189 to $354. Intel's 1.6-GHz to 2.0-GHz Pentium M chips range in price from $209 to $423. With a chipset and wireless card, a bundled Centrino package that includes a 2-GHz chip costs about $490.

Although the Pentium M demonstrated a small performance edge over a comparably-clocked Pentium M in office applications, the chip shone in AMD's own gaming tests. AMD's test system lacked a WLAN card.

Overall, AMD estimates the Turion holds a 33 percent edge in gaming applications, and in tests of benchmarks including Far Cry and the Aquamark benchmark, the Turion outperformed the Pentium M by 250 percent and over 175 percent, respectively. Using id Software's game, Doom III, as a benchmark, the Turion generated a more modest but still impressive improvement of 75 percent. Overall, Mahony said, AMD believes its Turion processor has a 17 percent performance edge.

AMD may add higher- and lower-power versions of the Turion in the future, Mahony said, and hasn't ruled out a version for desktop PCs, such as the prototype system Intel displayed at its recent developer conference.

"We will always monitor and respond to customer requests," Mahony said. "We've introduced lower power processors under our Opteron brand name for blade servers and such. We will certainly explore [other] lower-power processors as part of the brand."

Processor-Power--Speed---Cache-------Price
ML-37----35 W--2.0-GHz--1 Mbyte-----$354
ML-34----35 W--1.8-GHz--1 Mbyte-----$263
ML-32----35 W--1.8-GHz--512 Kbytes--$220
ML-30----35 W--1.6-GHz--1 Mbyte-----$184
MT-34----25 W--1.8-GHz--1 Mbyte-----$268
MT-32----25 W--1.8-GHz--512 Kbytes--$225
MT-30----25 W--1.6-GHz--1 Mbyte-----$189
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post #25 of 334
3/10/05 at 10:02am
Thread Starter 
Pics from that extremetech.com article...

Quote:
AMD Internal Testing - Turion Gaming Performance
AMD's own internal estimates of the performance of its Turion processor on popular gaming benchmarks.


Quote:
AMD Internal Testing - Turion Media Performance
AMD's own internal estimates of the performance of its Turion processor on popular media benchmarks.


Quote:
AMD Internal Testing - Turion Office Performance
AMD's own internal estimates of the performance of its Turion processor on popular office productivity benchmarks.
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post #26 of 334
3/10/05 at 1:18pm
excellent....(mr burns style)
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post #27 of 334
3/10/05 at 1:21pm
Excellent job tracking and linking all this info for us so quickly. Any ideas when some of these notebooks will be available?

edit: n/m just started reading the info
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post #28 of 334
3/10/05 at 1:57pm
If someone pairs up a Turion 64 with an X700, X800, 6800, or 6800 Ultra I'm going to have to cancell my XPS2 order. I hope someone makes an announcement of this soon.
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post #29 of 334
3/10/05 at 2:15pm
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=11457&hed=AMD's+Centrino+killer

Official annoucement made.
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post #30 of 334
3/10/05 at 2:45pm
Man didn't expect it to annouce so soon. Now that put a damper on my final decision on laptops. LoL!

I wonder when they will start to roll out the laptop. I would like to receive one by April 15th heheh
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post #31 of 334
3/10/05 at 2:45pm
ahh man, I thought it was an offical annoucement for the specs of a laptop from Acer. Ah well, soon I'm guessing

Tellerve
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post #32 of 334
3/10/05 at 2:55pm
http://www2.hardwarezone.com/news/view.php?id=867&cid=9

Interesting

Quote:
"We have had a great deal of success with our Ferrari branded notebooks based on AMD64 technology," said Walter Deppeler, senior corporate vice president, Acer Inc. "We look forward to continued success with our forthcoming notebook designs based on AMD Turion 64 mobile technology."
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post #33 of 334
3/10/05 at 3:32pm
hmm, now if you could get it in Ferrari black that'd be one thing. That and a less than obnoxious ferrari emblem. But it'll probably be red, with a really big horsey on it

*shrugs* I guess we'll all see in a few weeks or less

Tellerve
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post #34 of 334
3/10/05 at 3:49pm
Those extremetech amd-quoted gaming numbers are a little skewed. They're saying up to 250% performance advantages. Keep in mind that the turion they are using use the integrated ati express chipset for video, and that is being compared to the intel media accelarator thing, which of course will get trumped by the ati solution. Pair an X700 or something in both, and that's the numbers I want to see...
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post #35 of 334
3/10/05 at 3:57pm
http://www.trustedreview.com/article.aspx?art=1141

Quote:
Hoping to change that will be an initial offering of seven chips comprised of four 35W MLs: the 30 (1.6GHz, 1MB L2 Cache), 32 (1.8GHz, 512MB, L2 Cache), 34 (1.8GHz, 1MB L2 Cache) and 37 (2GHz, 1MB L2 Cache) and three MTs (its 25W brigade): the 30 (1.8GHz, 1MB L2 Cache), the 32 (1.8GHz, 512KB Cache) and the 34 (1.8GHz, 1MB L2 Cache).

Apparently, the M stands for mobility, the second letter defines the wattage. The least power hungry processors theoretically could start at A and the most portable would end in Z, which is why AMD started at L. Confused? If not why not?
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post #36 of 334
3/10/05 at 5:01pm
anyone read this

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2374
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post #37 of 334
3/10/05 at 5:17pm
Hm, but unlike that asus z71 whatever from itsnc that can supposedly take the yonah processor (assuming the dual version) can turion notebooks take the eventual dual processor? I read somewhere it'll be incredibly hot, not to mention aren't these intial processors on socket 754 which isn't dual core capable?

Still, if they pare it with a x700 or better with a good looking and feature average case with good battery life I'll be happy.

Tellerve
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post #38 of 334
3/10/05 at 5:42pm
Thread Starter 
Info on SiS chipsets...

http://www.d-silence.com/headlines/S...0Chipset/20712

Quote:
SiS Announces Chipsets to Support AMD Turion 64

Silicon Integrated Systems today announced the release of three new chipset products for notebook computers powered by AMD. The SiSM760, SiSM761GX and SiSM770 chipsets support the latest AMD Turion 64 mobile technology and are fully compatible with the latest power-saving technology for improved reliability and performance for notebook computers.

Additionally, the SiS chipsets also support the advanced PCI Express specification, bringing the advantages of PCIe into the realm of mobile computing. When combined with SiS wireless LAN chips, SiS fully satisfies the mobile computing needs of today and tomorrow for AMD Turion 64 mobile technology.

The new AMD Turion 64 mobile technology is based on the AMD64 architecture, bringing advanced 32- and 64-bit technology to the high-end market for thinner and lighter notebooks. This technology enables longer battery operation, while the SiS chipsets contribute to the "thin and light" design of the AMD Turion 64 mobile technology-based notebooks. All three new SiS chipsets support AMD's advanced 1600MT/s HyperTransport technology for improved system performance and low-latency, high-efficiency data transfer. The SiSM761GX chipset also features SiS's exclusive HyperStreaming technology, which provides intelligent data flow management for maximum performance in parallel resource allocation and concurrent / batch processing of data flow packets. HyperStreaming technology delivers revolutionary performance for high-end mobile computing platforms. The SiSM760 chipset has now entered mass production, marking one of the first AMD Turion 64 mobile technology-based chipset products to enter the market.

By adopting SiS' revolutionary Mirage graphics core, the chipsets provides among the best graphics performance for all the users of the AMD64 platform. The SiSM761GX and SiSM770 also support the new PCI Express X16 interface, which provides an 8GB/s bi-direction transfer rate, compared with the current AGP 8X standard of 2.1GB/s. Combined with SiS' latest South Bridge Chipset SiS966 / SiS966L, SiS offers buyers a formidable combination that is ready for the next generation of peripheral devices thanks to PCI-E support. The SiS966 / SiS966L support 2 PCI-E x1, Gigabit Ethernet, 8 USB 2.0 ports, High definition 7.1 channel sound, 4 SATA and 4 PATA. The SiS966 / SiS966L also support Multiple RAID disk array modes in RAID0, 1, 0+1 and JBOD.

http://www.dvhardware.net/article4378.html

Quote:
SiS launches M760, M761GX and M770 chipsets for AMD Turion 64
Posted on Thursday, March 10 2005 @ 18:30:59 CET by LSDsmurf

SiS released a bunch of chipsets for AMD's Turion 64 mobile technology - the SiSM760, SiSM761GX and SiSM770 chipsets.

The new AMD Turion 64 mobile technology is based on the AMD64 architecture, bringing advanced 32- and 64-bit technology to the high-end market for thinner and lighter notebooks. This technology enables longer battery operation, while the SiS chipsets contribute to the "thin and light" design of the AMD Turion 64 mobile technology-based notebooks. All three new SiS chipsets support AMD's advanced 1600MT/s HyperTransport technology for improved system performance and low-latency, high-efficiency data transfer.

The SiSM761GX chipset also features SiS's exclusive HyperStreaming™ technology, which provides intelligent data flow management for maximum performance in parallel resource allocation and concurrent / batch processing of data flow packets. HyperStreaming technology delivers revolutionary performance for high-end mobile computing platforms. The SiSM760 chipset has now entered mass production, marking one of the first AMD Turion™ 64 mobile technology-based chipset products to enter the market.
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post #39 of 334
3/10/05 at 5:54pm
Thread Starter 
2 interesting articles...

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1774783,00.asp

Quote:
AMD's Turion Takes Aim at Intel's Mobile Chips
By Jeffrey Burt
March 10, 2005

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. on Thursday is launching its Turion family of 64-bit mobile processors, which are designed to compete directly with rival Intel Corp.'s Pentium M chip and Centrino mobile platform. ADVERTISEMENT
The Turion processors are the first that AMD, of Sunnyvale, Calif., has designed specifically for the mobile computing space. Previously, the company adapted desktop Athlon 64 processors for notebooks. AMD will continue selling Mobile Athlon 64 chips for full-size notebooks.

Turion chips will enable AMD to gain greater traction in the growing thin-and-light notebook market, which is particularly big in the commercial space, said Bahr Mahony, division marketing manager with AMD's mobile processor group.

Systems makers and customers "are very much open to a processor brand such as AMD," Mahony said.

AMD expects that half of all notebooks sold will be in the thin-and-light category by 2006. Officials said the first notebooks armed with Turion will come from Acer Inc. worldwide and Fujitsu Siemens Computers in Europe.

AMD is releasing seven models in the Turion family, four of which—the ML 30, 32, 34 and 37—consume 35 watts of power, and the other three—the MT 30, 32 and 34—have a power envelope of 25 watts. Frequency in the chips ranges from 1.6GHz to 2GHz, and cache size from 512KB to 1MB. The price range is from $184 to $354, per 1,000 units shipped.

Mahony said the 25-watt envelope and 1MB of cache are key differentiators for AMD, as users are looking for more performance and greater battery life in their notebooks. In addition, the chips are made through the 90-nanometer manufacturing process, enabling AMD to put more features on the chip.

The processors also offer power management features through AMD's C3 Deeper Sleep and PowerNow offerings. In addition, the chips are compatible with 802.11 a, b and g and Bluetooth wireless solutions, and support SSE graphics instructions through AMD's 3DNow Professional technology.

Security features include Enhanced Virus Protection, and Turion also offers AMD's HyperTransport I/O interconnect technology.

While AMD wants Turion to compete with Intel's offerings, the company is not going to offer a platform like Intel's Centrino, which offers an integrated chip, chip set and wireless component. Instead, AMD will continue partnering with such companies as Via Technologies Inc., Broadcom Corp. and Nvidia Corp. for the chip sets and Wi-Fi components.

OEMs had told AMD that they didn't want to be limited in their choice of components by having the chip maker supply everything, Mahony said.

Still, AMD faces a tough battle with Intel, of Santa Clara, Calif., in this space. The Pentium M chip was designed with notebooks in mind, and the Centrino platform has gained significant traction since its introduction in 2003.

http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news...le.php/3488991

Quote:
AMD Mobilizes Turion to Fight Centrino
By Michael Singer

AMD (Quote, Chart) is upping the mobile ante in its chip battle against Intel's (Quote, Chart) Centrino processors.

The No. 2 chipmaker began shipping its single-core, low-power, 64-bit processor family named Turion today in coordination with the start of the CeBIT show in New York this week.

AMD said the chips should start appearing in thin-and-light notebooks and Tablet PCs later this month. OEMs like Acer and Fujitsu Siemens are first on the block to install Turion in their new mobile PCs. And the company's usual support group of ASUS, Averatec, BenQ, MSI and Packard Bell have also pledged systems based on the mobile chip.

Based on AMD's "Lancaster" designs, the low-voltage, 754-pin-compatible processor is made using 90-nanometer production and silicon on insulator (SOI) technology. In addition to its enhanced virus protection, courtesy of Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2, AMD is outfitting its Turion family with the option for either 1M or 512K on-die cache memory.

AMD is shipping seven different SKUs for the Turion debut. In 1,000-unit quantities, OEMs are looking at prices that fall somewhere between $189 and $354, which is much less than the $270 to $705 an OEM would spend on Intel's latest generation of Centrino mobile technology, code-named Sonoma. Turion also supports AMD's HyperThreading interconnect technology, which Intel doesn't.

The Turion family joins AMD's other 64-bit mobile processors, including Athlon64 chips for its desktop replacement laptops and the Athlon64 mobile processors for 15- to 14-inch full-sized laptops.

"Turion 64 is an improved mobile Athlon64, but it doesn't offer the same bundle of chip set and wireless as Centrino," Kevin Krewell, principal analyst for In-Stat and editor-in-chief of "Microprocessor Report" told internetnews.com. "It's a good part, but not a Centrino-killer. AMD's part is a step in the right direction for the company, but is not a part designed from the ground up for mobile as was Centrino."

However, AMD considers its "no vendor lock-in" approach more beneficial than Intel's single silicon strategy. AMD's Turion sanctions graphics partners like ATI, NVidia, SIS, VIA and ULI to help give the notebooks a clean face. Broadcom, Marvell and RealTEK are all expected to present new software that monitors LAN support. And as for that all-important wireless connection, AMD said it is serving up its wireless capabilities courtesy of Broadcom, which is compatible with HP and Atheros.

"The Turion is a legitimate competitor to the Centrino and should get the attention of OEM's who want to provide more options in power and value to their customers," said Tim Bajarin, principal analyst with IT research firm CreativeStrategies. "I don't consider its 64 bit capabilities key to it success since there is very little software available that will take advantage of this feature. But the no-chipset lock in will also help them get more OEM attention for this chip since it adds another element of flexibility for mobile designs. But I believe that its lower pricing than equivalent Centrino's is what will get them broader OEM interest once the Turion ships."

One challenge AMD has acknowledged is its relationship with top-tier OEMs like HP, which has not chimed in on how it might use the Turion family.

A research study by AMD found that of all who replied, 77 thought the brand of the PC mattered more in their purchases than the brand of the chip inside running the system. An additional 89 percent said they would consider buying a notebook even without Intel inside.

Outside of HP, AMD may have a harder sell. Dell executives have not expressed an interest in the No. 1 PC retailer abandoning its Intel-only policy. IBM also seems an unlikely candidate for adopting the Turion considering it is in the final phases of unloading its own PC division onto Lenovo.

However, Bahr Mahony, a division marketing manager with AMD's mobile processor group, told internetnews.com one bright spot on AMD's expansion plans may be Sun Microsystems (Quote, Chart), which has expressed an interest in producing its own brand of Solaris notebooks running on AMD processors. Sun is AMD's top Opteron OEM, according to analyst reports out of Gartner.

Executives at Sun were not immediately available to respond to Mahony's claims that it may want to produce laptops for the first time in its company history.

Turion's New Name Game

Along with the launch of a new mobile processor, AMD is revising its product identification policy.

Previous classifications focused on performance-based version SKUs, such as its 3200+ and 3400+ series. This time around, AMD is identifying models based on what they do, how they do it, and how much power it takes. Intel has already shifted its naming conventions as the need to focus on speed alone no longer matters.

The initial lineup of AMD's seven SKUs include the ML-37, ML-34, ML-32, ML-30, MT-34, MT-32, and MT-30 Turion processors.

In the case of its high-end ML-37, the "M" means that it is a mobile processor. The "L" designates how well the chip does while unplugged. Out of the range between A-to-Z, a higher letter indicates lower power consumption, enabling longer system battery life.

The numbers designate relative processor performance. The higher the number, the better its performance.

"We started out in the middle with our first batch of identifying Turion processors, because it allows AMD the range to move to lower power processors or use the methodology for higher power processors," Mahony said.

Mahony said the naming conventions may get a little dicey when AMD launches its first dual-core Turion later this year. The company is also taking a wait-and-see approach to beefing up AMD Sempron, its other single-core processor.
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post #40 of 334
3/10/05 at 5:56pm
Thread Starter 
Dual Core Turions!

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21717

Quote:
AMD confirms dual core Turions ahead
CeBIT 2005
By Mike Magee in Berlin: Thursday 10 March 2005, 12:20

CHIP FIRM AMD wasn't showing off any Turion machines on its stand here today, but a few others were, including Acer, Fujitsu and MSI, the firm said.
But over a chat it emerged that as we've reported several times before, AMD will introduce a dual core Turion, but after its released notebook and desktop machines.

Jan Gutter, a marketing manager based in Munich, also explained AMD's logic behind the somewhat byzantine numbering scheme using Ms and Ls and Ts.

Essentially, those models having the same number at the end will have the same performance, although the decision to start near the middle of the alphabet appears to be a somewhat arbitrary decision.

The T in MT stands for the 25 wattage that these processors have. The ML series function at 35 watts.

Explained Gutter: We need an additional brand, people understand Athlon 64 is a performance brand but we needed another brand for the mobility story. The Turion 64 is for the thin and light market and this is the distinction in the positioning. The underlying architecture is still AMD64 including Powernow, enhanced and the other features, he said.

He added: It's on our roadmap to have a dual core notebook chip. Opteron processors will be the middle of this year, then the desktop, then the notebook.

He said: We think the enterprise space makes the most sense at first because the applications need it. For the desktop you'll see most benefit from multimedia which is why we've positioned it this way.
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