AMD Working To Develop Netbook Light Processor [AMD Looking To Compete With Atom Chips, Will Also Replace Ion For Graphics]

Intel’s Atom processors are pretty much the far-and-away king when it comes to netbooks. Almost every one uses them, but now, AMD is looking to break into that market with a new upcoming netbook-specific processor. AMD’s Neo series is usually what computer manufacturers will throw into a netbook from the AMD side but the Neo processor as low powered as the Atom chips from Intel.

These new chips, yet unnamed, will have an impressive low TDP of just 10-15W which is comparable to the Atom processors. It’ll only be used on computers with smaller than a 12-inch screen. It’s apart of AMD’s Fusion initiative. When AMD bought graphics company ATI in 2006, they promised us combined CPU-GPU-Motherboards in a project named Fusion. Four years later, we’ve seen something practical come out of Fusion.

AMD is also taking a shot at their graphic rivals NVIDIA. AMD’s man Nigel Dessau said:

It will have a good processor integrated with graphics, so you won’t need the Ion graphics to give it half-decent performance… If we’d had a part, we’d have been in this space. We didn’t have a part so we went and worked on a part for the thin and light space. The plan is to come to market next year with a Fusion part that fits it nicely in a netbook type thing.

Note the digs on ION. AMD isn’t a fan of anything NVIDIA does and they’re promising better performance for netbooks which are poor at playing games, some Flash and HD video. If AMD is able to come up with a combined CPU-GPU chipset for netbooks, it could be cheaper than the current Atom-Ion netbooks, which is probably the most ideal netbook setup for getting the best graphics.

It’s worth noting that AMD is getting into a bare bones market. Intel executives have said that internally they’re not crazy about Atom chips because they make so little profit per each chip sold. However, they’ve been getting some pressure from the 1GHz Snapdragon ARM chips and expect them to defend the market from long-time rival AMD.

At any rate, you can expect AMD’s new netbook chipset sometime next year.