AMD Announces New Turion Chip Family for Mobile Computers

AMD (NYSE: AMD - news) says its new Turion 64 family of microprocessors is an answer to Intel's Centrino mobile computing line, which has become the defacto standard for business users. Industry experts have emphasized AMD's need to compete in the notebook computer space, especially on the enterprise enterprise side.


The Turion 64, which was announced as a product family today, will come to life in the second half of the year when the first microprocessors under the name are shipped for use in thin and light notebooks. AMD says it is just a first step in the company's rollout of new technologies for mobile computing.


Going Mobile


Intel has owned the lucrative notebook computing segment. Some analysts have been puzzled at why AMD apparently had ignored the field, which has provided a robust revenue stream for Intel. But AMD was planning to crash the party all along.


Earlier this year, the company announced the establishment of a research facility in Japan to develop mobile chips and attending technologies. It also rolled out a Mobile Athlon 64 microprocessor as a first stab at the market.


But the Turion 64 represents a much more considered approach to the problem of wresting some of Intel's Centrino business away. "We needed a mobile brand," said AMD's Bahr Mahony, division marketing manager for mobile PC processors.


Intel's marketing strategy is to push the Centrino brand rather than the Pentium M chip at the heart of it, but AMD has taken a different tack by promoting the processor family, Turion 64, itself.


"We think OEMs value the ability to select leading edge mobile technologies from our partners," Mahony told NewsFactor. He looks forward to the release of a range of configurations developed around the Turion 64 technology.


Break Into the Enterprise


AMD's Turion 64 may not amount to much if it cannot break into the enterprise. Intel ships gobs of chips needed in the fleets of notebooks sold to businesses. The lucrative angle of the mobile computing market is not on the consumer side.


"The trend is toward thin and light computing," Mahony added. "The first Turion 64 chips will be shipped in thin and light notebooks that offer longer battery [life] and will better serve the commercial space," he said.


The more power-hungry Mobile Athlon 64 will remain as a microprocessor for the larger PC replacement notebooks. Turion represents a fork in the engineering road for AMD's 64-bit architecture. Mahony says the first Turion 64 chips to ship later this year are "just the first step on the path to developing more technologies under the new brand name."

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