AMD Takes New Athlon XP To-Go

Advanced Micro Devices AMD Monday continued its fight against rival Intel with the release of its Athlon XP processor 2200+ – a new processor designed for notebook computers.

Bumping its 8-week-old mobile Athlon XP 2000+ from the top of AMD’s notebook offerings, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based semiconductor maker says Fujitsu Siemens is using the new chips in its AMILO A-x600 series. Other computer makers including Epson Direct and U.K.-based Time Computers are expected to feature systems based on the new mobile AMD Athlon XP processor later this month.

The new mobile chips feature QuantiSpeed architecture, which incorporates a nine-issue, fully pipelined superscalar microarchitecture, a superscalar floating point unit, hardware data pre-fetch, and exclusive and speculative Translation Look-aside Buffers (TLB).

The 2200+ chip also supports AMD’s 3DNow! Professional instruction set for enhanced multimedia capabilities, and AMD PowerNow! technology for extended battery life. The new processor is priced at $186, in 1,000-unit quantities.

Made in its Fab 30 in Dresden, Germany, AMD’s new chip is manufactured under 0.13 micron copper process technology and is compatible with AMD’s Socket A infrastructure, and supports the advanced 200MHz and 266MHz AMD Athlon front-side bus options.

“AMD is relentless in its commitment to deliver what’s right for the customer,” said AMD vice president of Client Business Ed Ellett. “The mobile AMD Athlon XP processor 2200+ is designed with notebook PC customers in mind to offer high levels of performance and productivity.

Intel has been focused on the laptop community for some time.

Both chipmakers are looking towards the more lucrative laptop market since the PC sector has seen a saturation of high-speed chips in desktop models.