AMD Ships Turion 64 Mobile Chip

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company is aiming the Turion 64 at the "thin and light" mobile processing space, positioning the 64-bit chip as one with better battery performance, including a 25-watt CPU designed for longer battery life.

The Turion 64 will come in several models and in a range of prices, from $189 to $354 in 1,000-unit orders. AMD said it has begun shipping the processors to OEMs, several of which are expected to make product announcements at the CeBIT trade show in Hannover, Germany.

Unlike Intel—which offers a Centrino mobile platform that bundles a processor, wireless card and chipset in one package—AMD will only ship the processor and has forged partnerships with vendors that will supply the other components, including ULi, VIA, ATI and Nvidia for graphics chipsets, Broadcom and Atheros for wireless cards, and Broadcom and Marvell for LAN support.

Even with the differentiation and with a processor that, unlike its competition, is a native, 64-bit chip, AMD may have its work cut out for it in cutting into its rival's market position.

"I don't know if [the Turion 64] is going to be a threat or not," said Doug Phillips, vice president of technical services at Seneca Data Systems, a North Syracuse, N.Y.-based system builder. "Right now, you buy a laptop built on the AMD mobile [processor] and it works great. I think AMD needs to do a lot more marketing to put a dent in Intel.

"Intel has the mind share, and they do a good job of marketing and a great job of supporting their customers," Phillips said.

To eat into that mind and market share, AMD will seek to give OEMs a processing platform that focuses on "road warriors," an executive of the company said.

"We've optimized our manufacturing process in order to reduce the power consumption, to extend the battery life of the notebook," said Bahr Mahoney, AMD's mobile marketing manager. "We're partnering with leading companies across the ecosystem in order to develop a very robust, power-efficient system."