AMD's Griffin and Puma to attack Santa Rosa

AMD has been stuck in a rut for the last year or so: the chipmaker has fallen far behind Intel in the multi-core race and last year's 4x4 platform--which was supposed to put the company back on track--severely disappointed in performance tests. It's not too surprising given Intel's position as the market leader; AMD has considerably less cash for R&D and for building expensive 65nm fabrication plants--which is not to mention the 45nm plants that Intel is currently looking toward.

Despite its underdog status (and the Dungeons & Dragons-style imagery that this headline seems to conjure), AMD appears to be on the cusp of a major comeback. The company has announced its quad-core lineup and isn't shy about the fact that these are "native" quad-core chips, unlike Intel's offerings. Now AMD is going after Intel's new "Santa Rosa" Centrino mobile platform with two new offerings set to debut in 2008: "Griffin" and "Puma." Details are a bit sketchy at this point, but here's what we know so far: Griffin is a 65nm mobile chip (a third-generation Turion 64 X2 dual-core 64-bit processor, to be exact) that supports DDR2-800 RAM and focuses on energy efficiency and improved battery life. Meanwhile, Puma is a mobile platform that goes all out: it's built around an RS780 chipset with a DX-10 class graphics core, Blu-ray and HD DVD acceleration support, and DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort support. Used together, Griffin and Puma should offer a lot of performance without draining your battery, though in order to compete with Santa Rosa they'll have to throw some wireless mobility options in there as well. Regardless, it's been a while since AMD has looked so competitive and late 2007/early 2008 could mark a return to the cola processor wars of the 1990s.

For more on the upcoming mobile products:
- see this Hot Hardware article