All the Santa Rosa news must have annoyed AMD and now it’s coming out a notebook chip platform of its own, code named Puma. The platform will consist of processors, GPUs and technologies, all of which are being configured to optimize battery and video performance. Puma’s still a ways away, with the first notebooks that use it coming out in mid-2008.
Perhaps the most important component of Puma will be AMD’s new Griffin processor, whose memory controllers operate outside of the core of the processor itself. Untangling that a bit, that means that the core of the processor, the part of the PC that drains the most power, can take a rest when it’s not doing anything.
Puma is AMD’s first mobile chipset (Intel already has the Centrino family, Santa Rosa being the most recent generation) and it’s seen as a way for the chip manufacturer to get back in the game. I remember AMD used to be what “smart” people put into their PCs, but ever since Intel started throwing around its dual core, AMD’s sorta fallen by the wayside, anecdotally speaking.