Toshiba’s First Laptops with New AMD Platform, are Out

Toshiba on Wednesday introduced laptops powered by the new Puma-based processors recently announced by Advanced Micro Devices.

AMD’s new Turion X2 Ultra ZM processors will be included in Toshiba’s new Satellite PCs, which will ship later this year, a Toshiba spokesman said.

The Turion X2 Ultra processor is part of the Puma platform launched by AMD on Tuesday. The processors come in two speeds: the ZM-80 runs at 2.1GHz and comes with 2M bytes of cache, while the Turion X2 Ultra ZM-86 runs at 2.4GHz and includes 2M bytes of cache.

Along with the Turion Ultra ZM, Toshiba said two other chips from AMD — Athlon Dual Core QL and Turion Dual Core RM — will be offered in the Satellite P300D, Satellite A300D, Satellite M300D, Satellite U400D, Satellite L300D and Satellite L350D laptops. It wasn’t immediately clear what processors each laptop would come with.

During the Puma launch, AMD said it had won notebook designs for the platform from PC makers including Acer, Asus, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, NEC and Toshiba. About one-third of laptop designs have 15-inch screens, with other models having screen sizes from 12 inches to 18 inches.

Puma laptops are designed to run Windows Vista, AMD has said.

The Puma platform also includes the mobile AMD 7-series chipset and ATI Radeon HD 3000 Series graphics cards. The Puma platform supports hybrid graphics technology, which boosts the platform’s graphics performance by running both the integrated graphics processor and a separate graphics card.

AMD Finally Ships Quad-Core Opterons

Advanced Micro Devices on Wednesday announced it was shipping the quad-core Opteron chip in volume after fixing a bug, but concerns are being raised about AMD’s abilities to stick to its product roadmap, analysts said.

The chip, code-named Barcelona, was delayed in December because of a bug in the L3 cache that caused applications to fail. The chip maker started shipping the chip in September in limited quantities to vendors running high-performance computers.

The new chip is shipping in volume to computer makers including top server vendors Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, IBM and Dell.

AMD didn’t feel comfortable shipping a chip with the problem, said Steve Demski, AMD Opteron product manager. “We’re glad to have this one errata behind us. This is a product we’ve been waiting to offer for a long time.”

The Barcelona chip created much enthusiasm 18 months ago as the first quad-core chip when it broke away from Intel’s traditional multicore architecture, said Richard Doherty, research director at The Envisioneering Group. In an industry that has its own challenges, customers were waiting for Barcelona and still kept waiting until interest waned, Doherty said.

“The goodwill and camaraderie and enthusiasm at a peak two years ago has more than waned. In the silicon [industry] you have to ship on time,” Doherty said.

Computer makers want to offer customers an alternative, but need from chip makers a clear message and dependable delivery schedule from which they can plan shipments. “Nearly everyone wants a robust competitive economy besides Intel,” Doherty said, referring to Intel’s dominant position in the chip market.

However, AMD did not deliver chips on time, and customers shifted to Intel quad-core processors, which have stayed on schedule and fairly faithful to their roadmap. Intel currently has a sizeable lead over AMD in the global microprocessor market. Meanwhile, AMD has filed antitrust lawsuits and complaints globally accusing Intel of anticompetitive behavior.

The Envisioneering Group, which benchmarks chips, hasn’t yet received a Barcelona chip from AMD for benchmarking despite requests.

“[It] is not good because every vendor who has said we are going with multiple suppliers wanted [AMD] to succeed better. Now there’s just tremendous doubt,” Doherty said.

Barcelona’s bugs and delays cost AMD momentum, time, money and credibility, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst with Insight 64. The company has a lot of work to do with customers and computer makers to build back its reputation, he said.

“Now that the product is available and [AMD] put the chips in systems, they can get back on track” and compete with Intel, Brookwood said. “There’s been a lot of concern, and what AMD’s saying here, is we’ve got it under control.”

The Barcelona delays have also generated concern about AMD’s ability to deliver its next quad-core server chip, Brookwood said. Code-named Shanghai, the chip will be manufactured using the 45-nanometer process and is due to go into production in the second half of 2008, he said.

“They said they will be able to. It’s just not enough to say that, they have to do that. If they can, they can be back in the game,” Brookwood said.

Intel is also making moves in the multi-core game. As the quad-core Shanghai goes into production, Intel plans to ship a Xeon server chip, code-named Dunnington, which will have six cores. Intel will start shipping server chips based on its new architecture, code-named Nehalem, in the second half of 2008. Nehalem chips will come with four and eight cores.

AMD said that in the “latter half” of 2009 it will ship its next server chip, code-named Montreal, which will come with four and eight cores.

AMD Intros New Phenom Chips And Triple-Core Processors

Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday announced new Phenom chips, including quad-core chips and its first triple-core processors for desktop PCs.

The company’s triple-core Phenom X3 8000 series processors provide an option to mainstream PC buyers who don’t want to spend on a quad-core processor but are looking for more performance than a dual-core processor, said Pat Moorhead, vice president of advanced marketing at AMD.

The chips could be used for high-definition video playback, casual mainstream gaming and productivity applications, Moorhead said.

The company’s first triple-core processors include the Phenom X3 8400, which runs at 2.1GHz, and the Phenom X3 8600, which runs at 2.3GHz. Both will come with 1.5MB of L2 cache and 2MB of L3 cache.

AMD also launched three Phenom quad-core processors on Thursday — the Phenom X4 9750, which runs at 2.4Ghz; the Phenom X4 9850, which runs at 2.5GHz; and the Phenom 9100e, a low-voltage quad-core processor that runs at 1.8GHz and has a 65-watt power envelope during maximum usage. All the processors contain 2MB of L2 cache and 2MB of L3 cache.

PC makers will ship products with the quad-core processors in the second quarter, AMD said.

The triple-core processors are already shipping in volume to PC makers, AMD said. U.S. vendor ZT Systems will list PCs with the new triple-core Phenoms on Monday, with other “major OEMs” and system vendors shipping products next quarter, AMD said. Many major vendors, including Dell and Hewlett-Packard, have already hinted at including the processors in desktops.

Dell has listed plans to use the chip in its OptiPlex 740 business desktop systems. It will ship the triple-core OptiPlex in the second quarter, a company spokeswoman recently said, but she declined to specify which processor will run the desktop. Hewlett-Packard has also listed a desktop on its Bulgarian-language Web site with AMD’s Phenom Triple-Core 8600B processor.

Mesh Computer, a PC vendor in the U.K., is offering the Matrix XXX Plus desktop with the Phenom X3 8400 processor and the Matrix XXX Pro desktop with the Phenom 8600 processor.

Because the triple-core chip is a new concept–set between the widely accepted dual- and quad-cores–it’s unclear how it will fit in the market, said Dean McCarron, founder and principal at Mercury Research.

“You’re going to get a performance enhancement with the extra core above and beyond a dual-core,” McCarron said. But it also falls shy of a quad-core.

AMD designed the triple-core as a way to produce a cheaper chip. The triple-core processor is built on a quad-core CPU, with one core nonfunctional, McCarron said.

The triple-core chip gives AMD a tactical advantage over Intel, McCarron said. Intel will need to answer the triple-core chip with a product priced in the same range while delivering similar performance. Intel can take a dual-core or quad-core processor, adjust features like cache, and price it similar to AMD’s triple-core processor, McCarron said.

Acer Unveils Multimedia-Optimized Notebooks

Acer unveiled a line of multimedia-optimized laptops in New York at its first-ever U.S. press conference, where it also announced the close of its acquisition of Dutch computer-maker Packard Bell.

Acer unveiled the Aspire 8920 and 6920 series of notebooks with a new design, the company is calling Aspire Gemstone “blue.” The laptops, which come in both 18.4-inch and 16-inch versions, include a Blu-Ray disc drive, full high-definition (HD) LCD screens and support for the Dolby Pro Logic 2.0 surround-sound audio system.

Speaking at a press event, Senior Corporate Vice President Jim Wong said the new design is aimed at bringing a “true multimedia innovation” to the notebook form factor. The new notebooks are based on Intel Core 2 Duo processors and run either Windows Vista Ultimate or the Windows Vista Home Premium OS because of the multimedia functionality those OSes can deliver. However, Wong said, Acer would consider running a different OS — presumably Linux — on machines that don’t require rich multimedia capability.

The New York event, was a U.S. coming-out party of sorts for the Taiwanese computer-maker. Acer is eager to woo U.S. consumers now that it is offering not only its own notebooks here, but also eMachine computers from Packard Bell and PCs from U.S. computer-maker Gateway, the acquisition of which Acer revealed last August.

In his first official press appearance in the U.S., Acer’s President Gianfranco Lanci clarified company’s branding strategy going forward, saying products from all three companies will remain in the market under their own names. “We didn’t buy a company to kill the brand,” he said.

Lanci said Acer plans to keep all three brands in the U.S. and Europe, although Gateway computers — including the eMachines brand — will be sold in “some countries only.” In Asia and the U.S., the Acer and Gateway brands will be most prominent, including the Gateway eMachines brand in the U.S. Lanci said Acer is basing its brand distribution on how well the different products sell in each geographic area.

Having all three brands also will diversify Acer’s market penetration across its three main geographical regions, broadening its reach in the U.S. while reducing the amount of business that comes from Europe, he added.

For the most part, Acer will keep the design of each of the three brands consistent with their current design. The new Aspire Gemstone “blue” design, for instance, will only be used for Acer notebooks.