Advanced Micro Devices hopes to provide thin-and-light laptops thatare less expensive but equally speedy to Intel's ultrabooks withits new A-series chips, which the company officially announced onTuesday. The A-series chips, code-named Trinity, will enable laptops to bemade that are comparable in size, weight and battery life toIntel's ultrabooks, said John Taylor, director of global productmarketing at AMD. Users won't have to pay "premium prices" forTrinity ultrathin laptops, which will be significantly cheaper thanIntel's ultrabooks. Laptops with Trinity chips will be priced at "mainstream prices,"and offer battery life of up to nine hours, Taylor said. AMD hassaid that Trinity laptops could start at US$500, while Intel'sultrabooks starting prices of $750 to $800.
Intel hopes to bringthat down to $699 by the year end. Laptops with Trinity chips will offer around eight hours of batterylife, Taylor said. The chips will go into laptops up to 22millimeters thick, just a hair over the 21-mm maximum set by Intelfor ultrabooks, AMD's Taylor said. The chips will draw around 17watts of power, similar to the upcoming Intel's Ivy Bridgeultrabook chips.
AMD will also provide quad-core Trinity chips for ultrathins,Taylor said. Intel has said ultrabooks for now would be limited todual-core processors, but quad-core chips could give AMD-basedlaptops a performance advantage. "We have differing approaches [to Intel]," Taylor said. "You willsee a spread of price points and configurations that will createmore lower price points for consumers to jump in." The A-series chips will initially appear in systems from five PCmakers, with hundreds of designs in the works, Taylor said.Hewlett-Packard last week introduced thin-and-light Envy Sleekbooklaptops with options including AMD's latest A-series chips startingat $599. That is $150 cheaper than HP's new Envy ultrabooks, whichhave Intel processors and start at $749.99.
HP said that Envy ultrabooks and Sleekbooks offer similar batterylife of eight to nine hours. HP also said that while Sleekbookswith AMD were strong on graphics, the Intel ultrabooks wereslightly thinner and lighter, offer better resume time from standbyand also have antitheft features. AMD's Trinity chips come a month ahead of Intel's launch ofthird-generation Core chips for ultrabooks, code-named Ivy Bridge.Intel is pouring $300 million into the development of ultrabooks,which will have tablet-like features such as instant boot,touchscreens and all-day connectivity. AMD said Trinity-basedlaptops will ultimately have features like touchscreens andhigh-resolution screens.
PC makers want to offer laptops at every price point, and designsare tweaked to get the smallest size and best battery life, saidDean McCarron, analyst at Mercury Research. AMD's calling card inthe past has been lower pricing. AMD excels on graphics, but there are questions about whether thecompany's chips can match Intel on power efficiency, McCarron said.AMD's Trinity chips are a manufacturing generation behind Intel,whose upcoming ultrabook chips will have 3D transistors and will bemade using the 22-nanometer process. The new chips replaces the current line A-series line of processorscode-named Llano announced in June last year. AMD has improved theCPU, which is 25 percent faster than comparable Llano chips, andgraphics core, which is 50 percent faster.
The Trinity chips have anew CPU core code-named Piledriver, which succeeds the previousBulldozer core used on the high-end FX desktop and Opteron serverchips. The first Trinity chips include low-power chips that could go intothin and low-power laptops. The dual-core A6-4455M chip runs at aclock speed of 2.6GHz and draws 17 watts of power, while thequad-core A10-4655M chip runs at 2.8GHz and draws 25 watts. Thecompany also announced three 35-watt A-series chips. Desktops and all-in-ones with Trinity chips will come next month,Taylor said.
PCs with the new chips are ready for Windows 8 -- forexample the Metro user interface is offloaded to the graphicsprocessor, leaving the CPU free to take on additional tasks. The Trinity release comes as AMD rebuilds its product portfolio andrestructures its business model. The company appointed formerLenovo executive Rory Read as CEO in August last year, and newchief technology officer Mark Papermaster was appointed in October. The management changes didn't alter the Trinity chip design, Taylorsaid.
Going forward, the company is trying to maintain chipflexibility so it can include third-party intellectual property, in line with a change in chip design methodology set forth by the company on analyst day in February. Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductorsfor IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh . Agam's e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com. I am a professional writer from Apparel, which contains a great deal of information about mens fitness clothing , girls dressy shoes, welcome to visit!
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