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AMD defining Centrino-like ATI-based laptop platform?

'Yokohama' = 'Yamoto' + ATI - Nvidia

By Tony Smith • Get more from this author

31st August 2006 08:13 GMT

AMD and ATI are to launch a notebook platform next quarter, it has been claimed. The move appears to build on AMD's past portable-platform development efforts, in particular 'Yamoto', it's attempt to devise a set of specifications based on its CPUs not unlike Intel's Centrino.

The new version is dubbed 'Yokohama', a DigiTimes report alleges. Unlike Yamoto, Yokohama will focus exclusively on ATI chipsets. Whether that will still be the case if AMD's purchase of ATI does not go ahead isn't clear at this stage.

Either way, Yokohama pairs AMD's Turion 64 X2 dual-core mobile processors with a number of ATI mobile chipsets: RS690M and RS790M, to name but two. If Yokohama follows the pattern set by Yamoto, it will also include a range of WLAN chipsets from the likes of Airgo, Atheros and Broadcom, and LAN controllers from companies like Broadcom, Marvell and Realtek.

If the description of Yokohama is correct, it still seems more of a broad selection of components than the tightly integrated trio of CPU, chipset and WLAN adaptor that defines Centrino. Will AMD create a brand for the platform? It may, as it's trying to do with its Viiv rival, Live.

Yamoto - and, presumably, Yokohama - were devised by the Japanese laptop technology development team AMD set up back in 2004. ®

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