Computex Taipei Opens With AMD Launch

AMD headlined the opening day of the 25th annual Computex Taipei 2005 electronics trade show Tuesday with the release of its Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processor.

The new CPUs can deliver performance improvements of up to 80 percent on digital media and productivity applications, in comparison with the single-core AMD Athlon 64 processor, company officials said. Key to AMD's dual-core architecture is systems builders can upgrade them without having to swap out motherboards.

"We've listened to what's important to partners and customers," said Henri Richard, AMD's executive vice president of worldwide sales and marketing, speaking here at the company's launch event for the X2.

The AMD Athlon 64 X2 is part of AMD64's Direct Connect Architecture, which directly connects two cores on a single die to improve system performance and efficiency, helping to eliminate bottlenecks in the current front-side-bus architectures.

Among OEM partners that announced plans to release systems based on the new processor are Acer, Alienware, HP and Lenovo, and more than 40 systems-builder partners worldwide. AMD released four models of its Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processors: 4800+, 4600+, 4400+ and 4200+, priced based on performance in 1,000-unit quantities at $1001, $803, $581 and $537, respectively.

The systems are best suited for creators and users of digital video and audio content, as well as business users who tend to multitask with multiple applications simultaneously, said Teresa DeOnis, an AMD product marketing manager. "For the mainstream market, this idea of multitasking and running security and productivity applications with increased performance is a key benefit and enabler," DeOnis said in an interview. More traditional office applications will see up to 30 percent improvements in performance, while digital content will push upwards of 80 percent over single-core Athlon 64 processors, she said.

Also at Computex, Taiwan-based Accton announced the launch of its wireless LAN (WLAN) mesh networking products based on the company's Wireless Intelligent Transport Network (WITnet) architecture. The WLAN Mesh product line for deploying wireless mesh networks will be available to Accton's ODM customers in the third quarter. The WLAN Mesh product line was built to conform to the 802.11s standard.

The wireless mesh networks operate without centralized access points and are, therefore, geared toward large areas where cable runs aren't possible. Each Mesh access point accessing the network also acts as a transmission/access point, for a highly scalable mesh network. In addition, the network is fully redundant with intelligent routing -- for example if a Mesh AP or mesh link is down, traffic is automatically routed to another and passed along by the most efficient path.

Computex has emerged as a key forum for launches of IT products such as CPU components, peripherals, data storage devices, motherboards, add-on cards, software, mobile-phone components, security equipment and communications gear. This year, there are more than 1,288 exhibitors in 2,800 booths spanning four convention spaces. The show organizers have projected 120,000 attendees, second in size only to Germany's CeBIT.

--Jeffrey Schwartz contributed to this story.