AMD Brazos Low-Power Platform Outperforms Intel Atom in Early Benchmarks

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Intel has found a winner with Atom, its low-power chip meant for non performance-intensive applications like netbooks, tablets and embedded devices. AMD has long since been left without a viable alternative. But if the early indications are any good, AMD’s upcoming Brazos platform might soon pose a serious challenge to the Atom.

The main benefit of Atom is not its performance, but rather its low-power consumption. Think of modern netbooks achieving 11 plus hours of use on a single charge. However, in terms of performance–both in terms of CPU and graphics–Atom leaves much to be desired.

AMD is developing the Brazos platform, which will include the Zacate-series E-xxx and Ontario C-xxx processors. These will be at par with Intel Atom + Nvidia Ion chipsets, which not only take care of CPU processing, but also graphics. Hence, they are called “fusion” processors or accelerated processing units (APU).

If AMD can market these at the right price point, then we might see serious competition to Atom, in the sub-$500 netbook space.