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Advanced Micro Devices today launches its first mobile Athlon processor, the Mobile Athlon 4, which it hopes will challenge Intel's notebook stalwart, the Mobile Pentium III.

The Mobile Athlon 4 is a major product launch for AMD. It marks the company's re-entry into the notebook market, and it could trigger the same type of price/speed war between AMD and Intel that occurred last year on the desktop.

The new chip, offering speeds of 850 MHz to 1GHz--and AMD's power-saving technology called PowerNow--appears to be a strong challenger to Intel's ubiquitous Pentium III mobile chip. AMD also plans to compete with Intel's mobile Celeron processor in the value notebook market with its launch today of faster, updated mobile Duron processors. Compaq will be the first vendor to offer a notebook with the Mobile Athlon 4 chip; it will offer its product this Wednesday. Others will soon follow. Products with the new Duron mobile processor will also begin appearing soon, according to AMD executives.

What's in a Name?

Those familiar with the Athlon line may be puzzled by the odd naming scheme--there was no Athlon 2 nor was there an Athlon 3.

"Essentially, it's pure marketing," says analyst Dean McCarron of Mercury Research. "Given that, what a great choice," he says. By adding the number 4 to the chip's name, the company brings the chip on par with Intel's latest products in the minds of buyers, he says.

But is it really the fourth Athlon? AMD executives think so. Gary Baum, director of mobile marketing at AMD, explains that the very first Athlon AMD introduced in 1999 was a slotted product (current products fit into a socket). The second version of the chip marked the move from a .25-micron manufacturing process to the .18-micron process. The third version was the jump to an on-die L2 cache (code-named Thunderbird), and the migration from Slot A to Socket A. The new mobile chip features a refined core and several other improvements, making it the fourth Athlon in the series, he says.

AMD took the unusual step of launching the new processor in the mobile market first because the current "Thunderbird" desktop processor still has legs against the competition, Baum says. Plus, AMD's mobile division needed some of the chip's new attributes--such as its more-efficient power management--first, he says. Expect to see the Athlon 4 hit desktops later this year.

Notebook-Savvy Chips

AMD added a number of new features to the mobile Athlon 4; chief among them is its PowerNow technology. PowerNow, which first appeared on the company's K6-2+ chips last year, is similar to Intel's SpeedStep technology in that you can run your notebook's processor at a lower speed to conserve battery power, or at maximum speed for best performance. Unlike SpeedStep, however, PowerNow also lets you choose an automatic setting that scales the frequency up and down to match the needs of the programs you're running, Baum says. It's the optimal balance of performance and battery life, he adds.

While Intel provides two fixed speeds in its SpeedStep CPUs (1GHz or 700MHz, for example), AMD's PowerNow lets vendors choose from 32 possible speeds (most will use four or eight speeds, according to Baum), and its 1GHz Mobile Athlon 4 chip scales from 300MHz up to the full 1GHz.

Intel also reserves its SpeedStep technology for its Pentium III mobile chips; value-priced Celerons lack the technology. But AMD is including PowerNow with its new Mobile Duron chips, Baum says.

Improved Instructions

AMD has beefed up its 3DNow instruction set for the Mobile Athlon 4 and new mobile Durons; the new instruction set is called 3DNow Professional. With 52 additional on-board instructions, 3DNow Professional builds on the company's existing instruction set, which enhances handling of 3D functions and more, while adding compatibility with Intel's SSE instructions.

Mercury's McCarron says Intel will likely suggest AMD is playing follow the leader by adding SSE support, but in fact AMD is merely responding to what the market wants. Again, it's AMD leveling the playing field with Intel, he says.

AMD also added data pre-fetch capabilities to the Athlon and Duron's on-board caches. This new technology should help improve each chip's overall performance, AMD's Baum says.

Gunning for Intel

AMD has found success in the mobile market before, most notably with its K6 family of processors, says McCarron. When that processor ran out of gas, however, the company ceded its portion of the value-notebook market to Intel.

With its new mobile Duron processor, AMD has a chance to reclaim its spot in the value market, McCarron says. And the Mobile Athlon 4 represents AMD's first real shot at a piece of the performance notebook market, he says. That sector has been Intel's almost exclusively until now. "It will be a compelling product if the specifications bear out," he says.

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