NetbookTech

With the explosive growth of netbooks and the near dominance of Intel Atom processors in this particular market, one can’t help but wonder where is AMD in all of this? Well according to NetworkWorld, AMD is planning to lay out their product strategy for netbooks at an analyst meeting next month. Dirk Meyer, AMD’s president and CEO, had this to say on Thursday during the company’s conference call with financial analysts:

“We do have strategies together with our OEMs for pushing our solutions both down into smaller form factors and lower notebook price points”

AMD’s plans for the netbook segment apparently required a “complicated answer” which was not suitable for a phone conversation. Um.., yeah that sounded more like them saying “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

In any event, I am particularly excited about the notion of AMD entering the netbook market with their own processor/chipset offering. While I’m perfectly content with the Intel Atom processor, I utterly hate Intel integrated graphics (mind you, this is coming from a person who used to work in the Intel Graphics Components Division too!).

It should be interesting to see what AMD will do in this space. They certainly have all the necessary resources to make a competitive if not more effective product offering than the Intel Atom/Intel chipset combination.

On the processor side of the equation, AMD has the Geode processor which has a lower thermal envelope than the Intel Atom processor. However the company could also retool an older AMD processor and turn it into a super efficient processor – say make the old K8 into a small 45 nm product with a low thermal output. That would be utterly sweet.. but pure conjecture at this point. However, where the fun really kicks in would be on the graphics front with AMD’s line of ATI products. We all know ATI integrated graphics would be a far better solution than Intel graphics.. but what if the company decided to throw graphics, Northbridge and Southbridge components into a single die? Consider the heat and size advantages that this solution would provide? OK.. so I might be dreaming but it’s not inconceivable of AMD to pursue this route.

What does this mean to all of you netbook users out there? Better, faster, more efficient netbooks down the road. Oh yeah…

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