AMD will next year launch a processor specifically designed for ultra-mobile PCs (UMPCs), the chip maker revealed last week at the Computex show in Taipei.

Details remain scarce, but the chip is currently codenamed 'Bobcat', a feline moniker that perhaps aligns it with 'Puma', AMD's upcoming notebook platform. Puma comprises new mobile chipsets and AMD's 'Griffin' processor, the first CPU it has designed specifically for mobile applications rather than a tweaked version of its desktop processors.

It's not hard to envisage Bobcat as a combination of processor and GPU with both of these components bonded together in a single package. But that's just conjecture at this point.

However Bobcat is made, it will go up against Intel's next-gen UMPC platform, 'Menlow', which comprises the 'Silverthorne' 45nm processor Intel is current designing specifically for UMPCs. Menlow also incorporates the 'Paulsbo' integrated chipset. Intel claims Menlow will deliver superior performance yet consume half the power of the first version of UMP, launched in April, and a quarter of what previous UMPCs, many of them based on ultra-low voltage Celeron Ms, consume.

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