AMD Announces New Mobile Platform and CPU

Griffin and Puma bring a host of new performance and efficiency features for notebooks.

Attempting to scrape back ground lost with the debut of Intel’s new “Santa Rosa” mobile platform, AMD announced details on Thursday about its own upcoming mobile platform and processor for notebooks.

The platform, known as Puma, will use the new RS780 mobile chipset to deliver features including DirectX 10 graphics capability, support for a unified video decoder, integrated multi-monitor support, NAND flash support with HyperFlash, and PowerXpress, a solution for switching between integrated and discrete graphics processing to extend battery life.

AMD’s new Griffin processors will provide the computational horsepower for the Puma platform. Most of the processor’s features aim at efficiency, including separate HyperTransport and memory controllers for each core to allow them to go into reduced power states, and dynamic performance scaling for each core through separate voltage planes, which enables each them to run at a different frequencies and voltages depending on what the system demands.

 “With the unveiling of the ‘Puma’ mobile platform, we’re sending a clear signal to the market that we intend to drive continued innovation in notebook computing in 2008 and beyond,” said Chris Cloran, vice president of AMD’s Notebook Division, in a statement.

Notebooks making use of the new platform should be for sale by mid-2008, according to AMD.