Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

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Sgolds, Re: Are these Athlons thinner or lighter than our current Centrino laptops? Do they have longer battery life?

AMD competes in the desktop replacement market, not the thin & light currently. 90nm A64 and AXP will be better for the thin & light.

Then the answer is no. With AMD you get two choices: low voltage Athlon XP systems that give mediocre performance, or high power Athlon 64 systems that aren't much good outside of desktop replacements.

Re: Is there a noticeable performance improvement?

Yes. Refer to the mobile A64s.

Do you have benchmarks to back this up? My impression is that a 1.7GHz Banias will come very close in performance to a 1.8GHz Mobile Athlon 64. Will the 2.0GHz Mobile Athlon 64 have a "noticeable" performance improvement? I doubt it.

Re: AMD is introducing two new generations of mobile A64s in 2004, one on 130nm and one on 90nm. Additionally, there will be a size reduction to 90nm on 32-bit mobile Athlons.

Intel is introducing one or two new generations of Pentium M Processors in 2004, both at 90nm. One comes very early in the year - Dothan, and I expect a second one that will have a front side bus improvement to go with the Alviso chipset slated for the second half of the year. I expect Dothan to be performance competitive with Athlon 64, but at much lower power.

Re: The A64 desktop replacements are the leading edge of an onslaught of mobile products!

I've heard the term "onslaught" overused when it applies to AMD products. There is very often an "onslaught", but rarely do I see a product that actually ends up taking market share from Intel.