AMD Rolls Out Faster Mobile Chip

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March 08, 1999 (12:00 AM EST)

By Marcia Savage ,

The race for megahertz in the mobile market heated up today with Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s launch of its 380MHz K6-2 P chip for notebooks.

At 380MHz, AMD's latest chip is faster than Intel Corp.'s fastest mobile chip, the 366MHz Pentium II. AMD, based here, also announced 366MHz and 350MHz K6-2 P microprocessors for portables.

At the same time, Houston-based Compaq Computer Corp. rolled out new notebooks based on the 380MHz and 350MHz K6-2 P chips, the Presario 1670, 1675 and 1270. Compaq is the second major notebook OEM, after Toshiba America Information Systems Inc., to use AMD chips in notebooks.

The company added the P to the K6-2 brand name for the new chips to market them as a mobile performance line of products, said Dana Krelle, vice president of marketing at AMD. The P also will be added to the upcoming mobile version of the K6-III, which is scheduled during the second quarter, he said.

The 380MHz, 366MHz and 350MHz K6-2 mobile processors are available in volume quantities for $169, $149, and $119, respectively. The chips support the Super 7 platform with 100MHz front-side bus, and the largest available Level 2 cache up to 1,024 Kbytes, AMD said.

The processors operate at a core voltage of 2.2 volts and dissipate less than 12 watts of power running typical applications, according to AMD.

Krelle said AMD's K6-2 P chips offer comparable performance to Intel's mobile chips but at a better price.

In January, AMD released 333MHz, 300MHz and 266MHz K6-2 chips for notebooks. Intel, meanwhile, rolled out its first lower-cost Celeron processor for portables, at clock speeds of 300MHz and 266MHz. The mobile 366MHz Pentium II costs $696 in volume quantities; the 300MHz Celeron for notebooks cost $187 in volume quantities.

By midyear, Intel said it will release mobile Pentium II chips operating at 400MHz and 433MHz. By the end of the year, the chip giant will reach clock speeds of 600MHz or greater with a mobile version of the Pentium III produced on 0.18-micron process.

AMD's chips work well in basic notebook systems, said Rob Enderle, director of desktop and mobile technology at Cambridge, Mass.-based Giga Information Group Inc.

"For what is basically a box used primarily for E-mail and relatively light processing, the K6-2 works reasonably well," he said.