ATI To Introduce Core 2 Duo Mobile Chipsets

July 05, 2006 at 08:00:00 PM, by Thai Tan

ATI will release new chips for the Merom processor later this year.

In a bid to enhance its mobile chipset market share, ATI will introduce chipsets to support Intel's upcoming Merom processor.

To be launched some time in August, Core 2 Duo (codenamed Merom) will replace the existing Core Duo (Yonah) processors in most mainstream and high end notebooks. Intel's existing 945 chipset is compatible with Merom, after a BIOS update, but aside from 64-bit compatibility and a performance boost, the Napa platform will get no new features until early 2007 with the new Santa Rosa platform.

It looks like ATI is going to try to capitalize on the approximate 6 month gap between the introduction of Merom and the release of Intel's chipset which will add a ton of new features. We expect this platform will try to steal some thunder from Santa Rosa and possibly capture some major mainstream and value design wins in the notebook arena, which are often the most profitable design wins. ATI really hasn't specifically aimed at the high end performance notebook with its chipsets, but who knows, perhaps we will see a high end chipset designed for Merom with an ATI Mobility Radeon X1900 (aka M59) and Crossfire (dual GPU, like NVIDIA's SLI) support. One can only dream about that, but ATI's Merom chipset will be a reality.

LaptopLogic's Off The Record Page:1/1