AMD Catches Intel in Mobile CPU Race

Advanced Micro Devices has introduced the latest versions of its mobile processors, the 1.2-GHz mobile Athlon 4 and 950-MHz mobile Duron processors. The new chips will compete head to head with Intel's fastest mobile Pentium III-M and mobile Celeron processors, which run at speeds up to 1.2 GHz and 933 MHz, respectively.

Both the mobile Athlon 4 and mobile Duron processors use a 200-MHz front-side bus and AMD's PowerNow power-management technology, which the company claims can extend battery life by up to 30 percent. The mobile AMD Athlon 4 has 384KB of on-chip cache and the mobile Duron has 192KB of on-chip cache.

The 1.2-GHz mobile Athlon 4 is priced at $525 and the 950-MHz mobile AMD Duron processor is priced at $160, in 1000-unit quantities. By comparison, Intel's 1.2-GHz mobile Pentium III-M processor costs $722 and the 933-MHz mobile Celeron processor costs $134, in 1000-unit quantities.

The 1.2-GHz mobile Athlon 4 and 950-MHz mobile Duron will both find homes in Compaq's Presario 700 series of consumer notebooks, AMD said in a statement. Those systems are expected to be available November 21.

Mobile Battleground

The announcement is a bit of a speed bump for the chip maker, which previously marketed a mobile chip clocked at 1 GHz. However, the announcement heightens the mobile chip wars, which are considered by some to be the next battleground for AMD and Intel.

For its part, Intel introduced a 1.2-GHz Mobile Pentium III-M in September. It was one of a dozen mobile chips unveiled at that time.

That jump was also a speed bump, with an increase of less than 100 MHz over Intel's most recent mobile chip. Intel says that pairing the 1.2-GHz Mobile PIII-M with the improved 830 chip will improve performance from 35 to 65 percent.

Intel expects to ship a 1.5-GHz mobile Pentium 4 processor in the first half of 2002. The chip giant expects to follow that release with a 2-GHz version by the end of next year. The mobile Pentium 4 will also include an enhanced version of SpeedStep, Intel's technology for dropping the clock speed of a chip to conserve power when a laptop is running on batteries.

With the 1.5-GHz mobile P4 will come a companion chip set called the 845MP, which will include a 400-MHz processor-system bus and Intel's NetBurst architecture, and will support the DDR SDRAM memory type, Intel representatives say. The chip set will also carry some low-power additions, including a sleep mode designed to save power.