AMD is announcing its future Puma mobile technology yet again. This time at CeBit.
On Tuesday, the news headlines for AMD's Puma mobile technology demonstration at CeBit used words like "launches" and "formally announces." But this is neither a launch nor a formal announcement.
To be fair to AMD, spokesman Scott Carroll said this Tuesday: "No, it hasn't been launched and won't be launched until Q2." And he added: "Today at CeBit we unveiled our first working demo of a Puma platform and demonstrated its graphics capabilities vs. our existing mobile platform and vs. Intel's."
The problem is that AMD has been announcing Puma since the "launch" in April 2007. That's almost a year ago. At that time, DigiTimes--a nuts-and-bolts hardware technology news publication that rarely editorializes--reprimanded AMD, saying: "It is questionable whether...Puma will meet the hype AMD is currently trying to generate though these early announcements." And AMD has been trying to sell Puma ever since.
Things got a little more real--and more dicey--at the financial analyst day in December when AMD said Puma would be delayed until the second quarter of 2008. But AMD hit its Puma promotional stride again at CES in January.
So, what's new at CeBit? AMD's Carroll said that Puma has garnered over 100 design wins from original equipment manufacturers around the world and expects to have systems available for launch in Q2 2008. The price of Puma-based systems will range from $699 to $2,500.
Almost all other information about Puma is not new. It has been repeated in many forums that Puma uses the RS780M chipset and is based on AMD's dual-core Griffin processor--now called the Turion Ultra--and integrates 1MB of L2 cache. To reduce power consumption, each core can run at different frequencies and can dynamically shift frequency levels while executing a thread. The RS780M integrates a Direct X 10 graphics controller, which AMD claims is up to five times faster than Intel's X3100 integrated graphics.
Puma-based products will also come with Wi-Fi and an optional graphics card. In other words, a complete solution similar to Intel's Centrino.
Some Turion Ultra notebooks will also have the ability to turn on the more powerful discrete graphics chip and then turn it off when the extra oomph isn't needed in order to save power, as explained by AMD at CES, among other forums.
AMD roadmap dating back to 2006
(Credit: AMD)
AMD Q1, Q2 2008 roadmap
(Credit: AMD)Roadmaps are made to be changed. And in the case of AMD quad-core processor timelines, quite often. That said, they provide a clear blueprint to work from. The most recent AMD roadmap (dated late January) indicates that triple-core processors are coming fairly soon (March at the latest) and that they are initially targeted at commercial users.
On the chart, "triple-core" is clumped with the "Hardcastle" and "Perseus" business platforms, meaning that triple-core is initially a commercial offering--and AMD confirms this.
The chart also shows quad-core Opteron, a.k.a. "Barcelona," production beginning in the first quarter. (Just about now?) An AMD spokesperson confirmed that the B3 version of the processor (that fixes the so-called "TLB" bug) is on track. Barcelona general availability begins in the middle of the second quarter with computer makers delivering systems shortly after that.
And what about faster Phenoms? The quad-core 9700 (2.4 GHz) and 9900 (2.6 GHz) Phenoms come in the middle of the second quarter. Reports have indicated these may be rebranded to the 9750 and 9950, respectively, but the final branding scheme is still being worked out, according to the AMD spokesperson.
Puma: There were rumors swirling Wednesday about a Puma bug. Puma is a mobile platform based on AMD's "Griffin" processor and mobile RS780 chipset. Semiconductor analyst Doug Freedman of American Technology Research released a report Wednesday suggesting a bug may exist. "Our channel checks suggest AMD's Puma platform for notebooks may have a technical glitch (but) AMD could have a fix in the works that saves the launch," according to Freedman, whose report was quoted at length at EDN. Freedman believes it will affect the launch of Puma.
An AMD spokesperson said today that there is "nothing to the rumor." He added: "We continue to track to a Q2 launch on Puma. We expect to double the number of notebook design wins we had when we introduced Turion X2--around 100 total for Puma."
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