The AMD mobile platform is an open platform for

laptop A laptop, laptop computer, or notebook computer is a small, portable personal computer (PC) with a screen and alphanumeric keyboard. Laptops typically have a clam shell form factor with the screen mounted on the inside of the upper li ...

s from

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...

. Though little marketing was done on this platform, it has been competing with the

Centrino Centrino is a brand name of Intel Corporation which represents its Wi-Fi and WiMAX wireless computer networking adapters. Previously the same brand name was used by the company as a platform-marketing initiative. The change of the meaning of the ...

platform in the segment to gain more marketshare. Each platform has its own specification, catching up the latest technology developments. Since the acquisition of ATI, AMD began to include Mobility Radeon GPUs and AMD chipsets as part of the requirements of the mobile platform; the first of such platforms is the ''Puma'' platform.

Open platform approach

In February 2007, AMD had announced the "Better by Design" initiative to continue the success of the open platform approach for desktop back in early 2003 after the launch of

Athlon 64 The Athlon 64 is a ninth-generation, AMD64-architecture microprocessor produced by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), released on September 23, 2003. It is the third processor to bear the name ''Athlon'', and the immediate successor to the Athlon XP. T ...

processors with a lack of chipset being developed by AMD, and open the platform to chipset vendors such as

VIA Via or VIA may refer to the following: Science and technology * MOS Technology 6522, Versatile Interface Adapter * ''Via'' (moth), a genus of moths in the family Noctuidae * Via (electronics), a through-connection * VIA Technologies, a Taiwan ...

, SiS,

NVIDIA Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

and from AMD subsidiary

ATI Ati or ATI may refer to: * Ati people, a Negrito ethnic group in the Philippines **Ati language (Philippines), the language spoken by this people group ** Ati-Atihan festival, an annual celebration held in the Philippines *Ati language (China), a ...

. The initiative also includes platforms succeeding the ''Kite Refresh'' mobile platform. Under the "Better by Design" initiative, AMD introduced a three-cell arrow sticker to identify mobile platform products, which the top cell being the processor (as

Turion 64 X2 AMD Turion is the brand name AMD applies to its x86-64 low-power consumption (''mobile'') processors codenamed ''K8L''. The Turion 64 and Turion 64 X2/Ultra processors compete with Intel's mobile processors, initially the ''Pentium M'' and the Int ...

). The middle cell for graphics accelerators as NVIDIA or ATI (as a result of retaining the use of "ATI Radeon" branding for graphics ), including onboard graphics ( IGP), while the last cell representing the wireless (

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wave ...

IEEE 802.11 IEEE 802.11 is part of the IEEE 802 set of local area network (LAN) technical standards, and specifies the set of media access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) protocols for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer commun ...

standard) or LAN solutions, provided by one of the following companies:

Airgo Airgo Networks (formerly Woodside Networks), is a Palo Alto, California-based company specializing in the development of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless technology. Airgo Networks was founded in 2001 by Gregory Raleigh, V.K. Jones, ...

Atheros Qualcomm Atheros is a developer of semiconductor chips for network communications, particularly wireless chipsets. Founded under the name T-Span Systems in 1998 by experts in signal processing and VLSI design from Stanford University, the Univ ...

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wirel ...

, Marvell,

Qualcomm Qualcomm () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. It owns patents critical to the 5G, 4 ...

, and

Realtek Realtek Semiconductor Corp () is a fabless semiconductor company situated in the Hsinchu Science Park, Hsinchu, Taiwan. Realtek was founded in October 1987 and subsequently listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in 1998. Realtek currently manufactu ...

. The stickers to be used will be further classified by the system performance according to the processor performance, and into five classes, each having different colours as well as different logos for each component, listed as follows:

Market analysis

According to AMD figures in December 2007, AMD mobile platform gained 19% unit share in the market and about 23% revenue share of the firm during Q3 2007 while competing with the

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

platform. Figures for Q1 and Q2 2007 are 15% and 17% unit share, accounting for 14% and 16% of the company's revenue respectively. AMD's mobile platform, even as recent as the Turion 64 X2 platform, has been criticized as consistently performing worse than Intel's Centrino in all areas: system speed, heat dissipation, and battery life.

Implementations

Initial platform (2003)

Launched in 2003, the initial platform for mobile

processors consists of:

Kite platform (2006)

Introduced in 2006, the ''Kite'' platform consists of:

Kite Refresh platform (2007)

AMD used ''Kite Refresh'' as the codenamed for the second-generation AMD mobile platform introduced in February 2007.

Puma platform (2008)

The ''Puma'' platform introduced in 2008 with June 2008 availability for the third-generation AMD mobile platform consists of:

Yukon platform (2009)

The ''Yukon'' platform was introduced on January 8, 2009, with expected April availability for the first AMD Ultrathin Platform targeting the

ultra-portable Subnotebook, also called ultraportable, superportable, or mini notebook, was a marketing term for laptop computers that are smaller and lighter than a typical notebook-sized laptop. Types and sizes As typical laptop sizes have decreased over t ...

notebook market.

Congo platform (2009)

The ''Congo'' platform was introduced in September 2009, as the second AMD Ultrathin Platform targeting the

notebook market.

Tigris platform (2009)

The ''Tigris'' platform introduced in September 2009 for the AMD Mainstream Notebook Platform consists of:

Nile platform (2010)

The ''Nile'' platform introduced on May 12, 2010, for the third AMD Ultrathin Platform consists of:

Danube platform (2010)

The ''Danube'' platform AMD M880G Chipset
/ref> introduced on May 12, 2010, for the AMD Mainstream Notebook Platform consists of:

Brazos (Fusion) platform (2011)

The AMD low-power platform introduced on January 4, 2011, is designed for HD

netbooks Netbook was a commonly used term that identified a product class of small and inexpensive laptops which were sold from 2007 to around 2013. These machines were designed primarily as cost-effective tools for consumers to access the Inte ...

and other emerging form factors. It features the 40 nm C-Series (formerly codenamed Ontario, a 9-watt APU for netbooks and small form factor desktops and devices) and E-Series (formerly codenamed Zacate, an 18-watt TDP APU for ultrathin, mainstream, and value notebooks as well as desktops and all-in-ones)

APUs Apus is a small constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere, southern sky. It represents a bird-of-paradise, and its name means "without feet" in Greek language, Greek because the bird-of-paradise was once wrongly believed to lack feet. ...

. Both low-power APU versions feature two

Bobcat The bobcat (''Lynx rufus''), also known as the red lynx, is a medium-sized cat native to North America. It ranges from southern Canada through most of the contiguous United States to Oaxaca in Mexico. It is listed as Least Concern on the IUC ...

x86 cores and fully support DirectX11,

DirectCompute Microsoft DirectCompute is an application programming interface (API) that supports running compute kernels on general-purpose computing on graphics processing units on Microsoft's Windows Vista, Windows 7 and later versions. DirectCompute is part ...

(

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

programming interface for GPU computing) and

OpenCL OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs), digital signal processors (DSPs), field-progra ...

(cross-platform programming interface standard for

multi-core A multi-core processor is a microprocessor on a single integrated circuit with two or more separate processing units, called cores, each of which reads and executes program instructions. The instructions are ordinary CPU instructions (such a ...

x86 and accelerated GPU computing). Both also include UVD 3 dedicated hardware acceleration for HD video including 1080p resolutions. This platform consists of:

Sabine (Fusion) platform (2011)

The ''Sabine'' platformhttps://www.amd.com/us/products/notebook/platforms/home/2011-mainstream/Pages/2011-mainstream-platform.aspx introduced on June 30, 2011, for the AMD Mainstream Notebook Platform consists of:

Comal (Fusion) platform (2012)

The ''Comal'' platform introduced on May 15, 2012, for the AMD Mainstream Notebook Platform consists of:

References

External links

AMD Better by Design page

TGDaily: AMD announces details of next-gen mobile processor "Griffin"

The Inquirer: AMD Bulldozer to demolish Intel Santa Rosa

AMD mobile platform rodamap
from AMD Analyst day presentations, slide 29
AMD Better by Design event presentation
{{AMD graphics Advanced Micro Devices platforms Laptops