AMD confirms netbook CPU on its way

Nothing beats getting confirmation straight from the horse’s mouth. In an open forum this afternoon about netbooks, an AMD representative confirms they will come out with a netbook-specific CPU in the coming months.

The forum was hosted by Cyberpress and attended by the media, various netbook vendors, AMD, Intel and Microsoft. Missing in the scene are people from Dell and HP (who’s always been constantly the butt of jokes during the discussions about the heat dissipation of their mini-note).

No specific date was given to the launch of AMD’s Netbook CPU but it was indicated it could be within the quarter or early first quarter of next year.

AMD’s position with the netbook market has been constant — that this is just a “fad”. AMD peps likewise downplayed the future of netbooks and predicts the MIDs and mobile devices will take over the fad in the coming years.

So, it was a surprise to everybody to hear that AMD is developing the chipset for netbooks. Still, we should be glad that the playing field will no longer be dominated by VIA and Intel. More options is always better.

The Everun Note by Raon Digital is probably the only netbook that runs on an AMD Turion 64 dual-core processor. They were able to cool it down by under-clocking the CPU to just 1.2GHz. To further save on battery life, the CPU clocks down to just 800MHz when not plugged in to a power outlet. Red Fox is also using the AMD Geode processor for its WizBook laptops.

The likely candidate is this 1.0GHz CPU codenamed “BGA”:

With a reduced power usage of just 8watts (TDP), this may be it. Specifics are still unclear if I were to believe what the AMD reps claimed, they’re going to do better in the GPU side.