The company expects this will dramatically improve performance-per-Watt, possibly outgunning the offers from Intel.
"Our plan is to focus on mobile to deliver significant increases in performance per Watt. We will start in mobile and hopefully integrate upwards" [into desktops], said Steve Polzin, chief platform architect at AMD in a keynote address at the DesignCon Conference here Monday (Jan. 28).
The AMD strategy aims to recreate AMD's success with its Opteron CPUs that integrate a memory controller and standard cache coherent interconnect, easing the job of building multiprocessing servers as well as multicore processors. Thanks to the integration, AMD has grabbed a slice, of the server market from archrival Intel Corp.
Like servers, notebook computers represent a fast growing and relatively high margin segment of the PC sector. The integration of graphics is driven by the need to support high definition video and high quality graphics while maintaining low power consumption, Polzin said.