AMD spells out mobile plans for 2000

While mobile Athlons will not arrive until close to the end of this year, AMD aims to bridge the gap by introducing Gemini-based chips before June, it said today. Gemini is similar technology to Intel's SpeedStep mobile processors, which help to increase the length of time a notebook will stay active. Richard Baker, marketing director at AMD Northern Europe, said that the mobile K6-III+, a 100MHz front side bus part with 256K of on-die level two cache, and using .18 micron technology, will appear before June. The K6-2+ will have 128K of on chip cache. At the same time, Baker showed figures that suggested AMD has over 50 per cent market share in the US retail market. For sub-$1,000 notebooks, AMD has 88 per cent market share in the US in the retail market, the company claims. Toshiba, Compaq, HP and Fujitsu use AMD products in some of their notebooks. Judging from the open Athlon 800 that is sitting on our desk with a chip the size of a brick, it will be quite some time before AMD sorts out some of the power consumption issues involved in migrating the Athlon to a slim notebook. Intel's Coppermine mobile technology, on the other hand, seems to be just about there already. However, although AMD does have some share of the business market too, that is smaller, although the company intends to attack that area vigorously during this year. The reason for its growing market share in the retail market was because of the price performance capabilities of its mobile parts, said Baker. ®