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AMD Hardware Technology

AMD Launches Turion Mobile Processor 247

Posted by CowboyNeal from the silly-chip-names dept.
justforaday writes "Earlier today, AMD launched their Turion mobile processor, which is based on the AMD64 architecture. This is set to compete directly with Intel's Centrino (Pentium-M) line of processors. Chips will initially be clocked between 1.6 and 2.0 GHz. Looks like we should be seeing some nice low-powered 64-bit notebooks in the near future."
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AMD Launches Turion Mobile Processor More

AMD Launches Turion Mobile Processor

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  • Availability (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fembots ( 753724 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @07:08PM (#11905519) Homepage
    In my town of 1.5M people, I haven't managed to find a store that sells AMD-powered laptop. We must be the forgotten ones.
    • I've been using a Fujitsu AMD laptop for some time. The following URL should work from your town just fine:
      http://www.computers.us.fujitsu.com/ [fujitsu.com]

    • Re:Availability (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 10, 2005 @07:14PM (#11905566)
      They have this new thing called the internet. It sells you stuff and things.
    • You live in a "town of 1.5M people" and you don't have a Best Buy [bestbuy.com]?

      Not that I like Best Buy.

      You *could* order one from that thar intarweb, too.
    • HP/Compaq sell AMD-based notebooks. Gateway/eMachines sell AMD-based notebooks. Fujitsu sells AMD-based notebooks. Sony has sold AMD-based notebooks, although I can't speak about their current line-up. All four of these comapnies have their products available in large consumer electronics stores such as Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City, etc.

      In fact, the only big-name companies who don't seem to offer AMD notebooks are Dell (obviously), Toshiba, and IBM. Toshiba's the only one of that group that even se
      • I just bought myself an HP with a 3200+ AMD64, and all I can say is wow! I love the thing. It is a little bit on the heavy side, and the fan runs (although not a loud fan) all the time. But the performance is mind blowing. I am so happy with the purchase. At school we have dual P4 2.8's that we use for programming, and this thing runs the programs on campus just as fast if not faster. I am a little bummed about not waiting for the Turion, but frankly, I am extremely happy, and would recommend an AMD64 noteb
    • I read that as "one-point-five MegaPeople".

      I need to get out more.

    • " We must be the forgotten ones."

      That and Intel pretty much owns that market. From what I understand, Intel is generally preferred as the laptop processor mainly for its cost savings.

      If I'm in error, please correct me. Keep in mind, though, that I have a small light-weight TabletPC running on a Centrino processor that runs between 3 and 4 hours on a single charge. I'd really be interested to know if AMD's laptop processors to date can even compare.

      • I have an AMD64 laptop, and with cpufreqd installed I can get 2 hours of run time.

        Mind you, my screen is always at its brightest, and maybe the power management could be better, and I also installed 512 Mb RAM extra (up to 1 Gb).

    • Where do you live? Circuit City, BestBuy and CompUSA all sell Athlon powered notebooks.

      HP makes a few Pavillion models with Athlon processors.
    • "In my town of 1.5M people, I haven't managed to find a store that sells AMD-powered laptop. We must be the forgotten ones."

      Do you have a Sams Club, a Best Buy, an Office Depot, or a Circuit City?

      You're not looking hard enough.
    • you managed to actually go to a store that sells laptops and managed to actually ask for one or a list of laptops that they sell?

      redundant, yes i know, but seriously.. if you look at any place that lists/has even 4 different models there's pretty good chances of there being amd based one in there.

      that or you live in zimbabwe or something.

      you could buy one in any western town with 100 000 inhabitants...

      • Even with less habitants. When I was looking for a new laptop last year (September), there was already much choice in laptops with AMD64 processors.

    • You're blind. I know of two places in my town of 10,000 w/AMD64.

  • Question (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 10, 2005 @07:09PM (#11905523)
    This may seem like a silly question, but won't that only be useful if the laptop is going to have more than 4GB of memory? How often does that happen?

    • Re:Question (Score:2, Informative)

      by mabinogi ( 74033 )
      mine currently has 2GB, and it was purchased last year.....

      so > 4G won't be all that far away.

      But apart from that, there's more advantages to Athlon64 than the AMD64 instructions (which you're not going to be able to take advantage of right now anyway unless you're running Linux).

    • Re:Question (Score:5, Informative)

      by bersl2 ( 689221 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @07:19PM (#11905609) Journal
      There are other advantages, namely the additions to the x86 ISA that fix some of its shortcomings. There are 8 more general-purpose registers and 8 more SIMD registers.

      • Re:Question (Score:4, Interesting)

        by mp3phish ( 747341 ) on Friday March 11, 2005 @12:40AM (#11907526)
        your are correct. There are tons of compiler optimizations that can be done witht he athlon64 that cannot be done with any previous version of the x86 ISA... That being said, compiler technology isn't really taking advantage of this yet...

        The real advantage to having an athlon64 in a laptop is power savings and raw memory bandwidth and ultra low latency...

        For the first time ever (aside from crusoe but their mem bandwidth is not that much) we are seeing ultra low powered CPU's put into 12in sub-notebooks with on die memory controllers.. This is the single most advantageous feature of the athlon64. This is also packed into the Turion. This integrated memory controller means there is no exchange with an off die chip soldered onto the mobo (which adds several fold latency to every memory request and write). Instead, the CPU talks directly to main memory. This reduces memory latency to a fraction of intel's and older athlonXP laptops. and since latency is reduced significantly (im talking several times lower than the fastest centrino's memory controller) and memory efficiency is increased, you get much more memory bandwidth on top of all the above advantages.

        It has already been shown in every reviewer's benchmarks that memory intensive applications run significantly faster on athlon64's than any other platform (including Intel P4 EE) This is due to raw bandwidth and raw quickness (latency)

        Now, we can all sit here and say that the chip is capable of calculating 64 bit numbers without having to break it down, and that it is capable of running more than 4GB ram, and that it has more general purpose registers (which aren't taken advantage of when running winXP 32 btw) and that it has shed a lot of legacy logic which is implemented in microcode instead (like older stuff DOS uses)

        But in the end it is the memory controller which is the real improvement with athlon64. The 64bit-ness of the chip, and all those other features will have their time to shine.. Just not in the near future (the lifetime of a new laptop you might buy this year)
    • Might not be that common now, but the ammount of RAM necessary for the latest applications is always increesing. I've looked at SPARC based laptops with dual processors and 16GB of RAM. 64-bit is definitly necessary if you are looking at the high end.

      Check it out.
      http://www.partnersdata.com/cgi-bin/searchit em?id= 8434

      If you don't want to bother to get a quote, one of these configured with just about all the extras will run you $46,933 according to a quote I got.
    • This may seem like a silly question, but won't that only be useful if the laptop is going to have more than 4GB of memory? How often does that happen?

      As often as it does in game consoles.

      But, let us imagine for a moment, that some breakthrough in memory technology allows for a high-density, non-volatile, high-speed, random access memory. At this point, we can just stuff 10 or 20GB of this new NVRAM in the machine and not worry about a hard drive and its power consumption.
    • I agree ... and let me be the first to say that 64bit CPUs should be enough for everyone ;)
    • 32-bit processors are limited to addressing 4GB in TOTAL, including paged RAM (swap files or partitions). With a 64-bit operating system, an AMD64 laptop will be able to fully address 2GB of physical RAM and another 20TB or so of paged RAM (if your hard drive is big enough). Also, it gets you by the 2BG per-process limit of 32-bit Windows applications. Not a bad thing, IMHO. I don't know who is likely to need that kind memory in a mobile platform today, but in the not-so-far future it could be a necessity.

      • Re:Question (Score:5, Informative)

        by andreyw ( 798182 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @08:37PM (#11906211) Homepage
        Incorrect. Please read the Intel docs, specifically the sections on PSE/PAE, which both have been avaiable since the Pentium Pro. The virtual addressable space will still be 4GB, however the 36-bit address bus will allow for a theoretical limit of 64GB.

        • Answer (Score:3, Informative)

          by turgid ( 580780 )
          The virtual addressable space will still be 4GB, however the 36-bit address bus will allow for a theoretical limit of 64GB.

          That's true, however it's a dirty hack. The extra memory is only addressable in 4GB (or 2GB) segments. Therefore, if you have an application that needs more than 4GB in a contiguous chunk, you are out of luck. You could probably fake it with operating system calls and complicated wrpper functions to hide the memory address arithmetic. However, you loose a lot of performance.

          It's a bit

      • As the other guy said, not true. The 32 bit 80386 supported more than 4GB of RAM, if you could find that much back when it was a used (you couldn't). You just had to use segmented memory which everyone hated. (Back then the 286 was still fresh in everyone's mind, and the 286 couldn't do anything non-trivial without segmented memory. Today we are spoiled because few people care about such things.

    • Re:Question (Score:3, Informative)

      by Bloater ( 12932 )
      As bersl points out, there are other advantages. But I'd like to correct a common misconception - the 32 bit PC chips from (I think) Pentium pro onward from intel, and some time later from the other pc chip manufacturers, support much more than 4GB even though they only support 32 bit addresses in the CPU registers. 32 bits limit any given process on an OS such as Linux or Windows to 4GB of addresses at any one time. Although how much of that can be mapped to real storage is OS and OS version dependent. The

      • Re:Question (Score:3, Informative)

        by bluGill ( 862 )

        The 80386 supported more than 4GB of memory. I don't think anyone actually built a motherboard that could take that much memory, but it could in theory deal with it. You just had to use the same ugly segmented memory model that everyone hated about the 286 while in 32 bit mode. Everyone just set their segment to 0, since that still allowed 4GB of ram, and nobody with a 80386 had that much memory.

    • Re:Question (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Hack Jandy ( 781503 )
      Athlon 64 processors are not really useful because of their 64-bit addressing capability. The thing that makes Athlon64 (and Turion, and the newer Semprons) speed demons is the on board memory controller integrated into the CPU. No other x86 processors do this.

  • I'm Waiting For Benchmarks (Score:3, Insightful)

    by periol ( 767926 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @07:11PM (#11905543) Homepage
    It's not like AMD has been stellar in the mobile processor world before this. Centrino has been a no-brainer for a while in the laptop world.
    • Centrino is a no-brainer in only two segments of the mobile market: the thin-and-light long-battery-life market and the lots-of-cash market. The top-end Pent M's may equal the top-end mobile Ath64's at some tasks, but not for anything near the same price.

      However, the mobile Ath64 has its own niche carved out: relatively inexpensive mainstream/DTR notebooks. The extra battery life provided by the Pentium-M isn't that big of a deal on machines with big screens and beefy video cards, where the processor isn't
      • Looked into the Celeron-M much? Pretty much all of the same offering as a Pentium-M, minus some of the super nice speedstep features, and some L2. It's for the midrange laptops, and I'd say AMD will have a hard time competing with it, except for the fact that Intel has pushed "Celeron" as meaning "cheap" instead of "better option for most people who don't need bells and whistles". I believe if Intel pushed Celeron as being their mainline, they could use the Pentium line as being in the same position as the
    • Centrino + Turion = Centurion [wikipedia.org]

  • AMD launches 64-bit Turion processor for notebooks (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 10, 2005 @07:12PM (#11905553)
    Article without the annoying green advertisement links.

    Expected to Launch Notebook PCs Worldwide in Coming Months

    AMD today introduced AMD Turion 64 mobile technology, the latest in a succession of computing innovations based on the industry-leading AMD64 architecture. AMD Turion 64 mobile technology is uniquely optimized to bring award-winning AMD64 performance to thinner and lighter notebook PCs with longer battery life, enhanced security, and compatibility with the latest graphics and wireless solutions, both today and tomorrow.

    Together with industry-leading partners, AMD enables a best-in-class ecosystem of open industry-standard technologies, helping PC manufacturers to deliver feature-rich systems that satisfy the variety of ways in which people use their notebooks.

    "By embracing a broad partner community and industry standards, AMD is both providing choice and stimulating innovation," said Roger Kay, vice president of Client Computing at IDC.

    "We have unleashed 64-bit mobile performance, allowing business professionals and on-the-go consumers to explore the freedom of mobile productivity with AMD Turion 64 mobile technology," said Marty Seyer, corporate vice president and general manager, Microprocessor Business Unit, Computation Products Group, AMD. "This is just the first of many innovations that we are planning to pioneer with this new product family made for mobility, choice and best-in-class notebook designs."

    Leading global manufacturers, hardware vendors and software suppliers have expressed support for AMD Turion 64 mobile technology. "Fujitsu welcomes AMD Turion 64 mobile technology innovation, and we congratulate AMD on their success," said Mr. Kazuhiro Igarashi, general manager, Mobile PC Division, Personal Business Group for Fujitsu Limited.

    Business professionals and consumers worldwide can expect to see notebooks based on AMD Turion 64 mobile technology starting later this month in retail stores and through commercial distribution channels. The first systems are expected from Acer worldwide and Fujitsu Siemens Computers throughout Europe.

    "We have had a great deal of success with our Ferrari branded notebooks based on AMD64 technology," said Walter Deppeler, senior corporate vice president, Acer Inc. "We look forward to continued success with our forthcoming notebook designs based on AMD Turion 64 mobile technology."

    "As the leading European IT provider, we offer our customers world-class computing technology," said Herbert Schonebeck, Vice President Business Unit Consumer, Fujitsu Siemens Computers. "We are introducing innovative consumer notebook PCs based on AMD Turion 64 mobile technology to provide our customers efficient platforms to connect from virtually anywhere."

    In addition, ASUS, Averatec, BenQ, MSI and Packard Bell are among the leading, global computer manufacturers who have indicated they will support AMD Turion 64 mobile technology.

    Availability

    AMD Turion 64 mobile technology models ML-37, ML-34, ML-32, ML-30, MT-34, MT-32, and MT-30 are available immediately worldwide.

    In order to help consumers and business professionals simplify their notebook purchasing decisions, AMD Turion 64 mobile technology uses a new series of model numbers designed to provide a simple designation of both relative performance and degree of mobility within the processor family. The two letters of this model number indicate processor class, with the second letter designating increasing degree of mobility, as measured by power consumption.(a) As the second letter approaches the end of the alphabet, "higher" letters indicate greater mobility. The numbers indicate relative performance within the processor class. Higher numbers indicate higher relative performance among the AMD Turion 64 mobile technology family.

    Pricing

    AMD Turion 64 mobile technology models ML-37, ML-34, ML-32, ML-30, MT-34, MT-32, and MT-30 are priced at $354, $263, $220, $184, $268, $225 and $189 respectively, in 1,000-unit quantities.

  • What I'm interested in... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PornMaster ( 749461 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @07:12PM (#11905555) Homepage
    Are any of the major motherboard manufacturers going to put out a micro-ATX or smaller desktop motherboard for this to build a media PC upon?

  • Low Power? Better Link (Score:2, Informative)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) *
    Looks like we should be seeing some nice low-powered 64-bit notebooks in the near future."

    First, why such a lame link for this post? Here's a more informative one [eweek.com] Editors, sheesh!

    Ok, let's look at this without the rose coloured glasses:

    64 bit CPUs

    25 - 35 watts (peak)

    Better get used to lugging a massive battery if you plan to really get the most out of that 64 bit CPU. Honestly, why else would you have a laptop with such a race horse in it if you weren't going to be using it to its capacity?

    • Re:Low Power? Better Link (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bani ( 467531 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @07:27PM (#11905666)
      that's not too bad, compared to the 25w of intel's pentium-m.

      also remember than intel understates their peak power while amd overstates theirs. dont recall who did the test, i think it was the german c't mag who found the discrepancies between claimed and actual power consumption.

    • Re:Low Power? Better Link (Score:5, Insightful)

      by doormat ( 63648 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @07:46PM (#11905809) Homepage Journal
      Better get used to lugging a massive battery if you plan to really get the most out of that 64 bit CPU.

      What? Peak use is 25W-35W. Pentium Ms use 22W, but then you also have a northbridge and a southbridge. Whereas most Athlon-64 based (and therefore Turion 64) have only one other chip (other than the CPU). At the least, they're about the same in terms of power usage.
    • That's not that bad power usage at all. Remember, a lot of current laptops (as in just about any low to lower midrange model, as well as many "desktop replacement" models) have a full desktop chip crammed in there. The exact same chips that put out 75W+ in your desktop computer. Just like this Toshiba with a full blown Northgate 2.0Ghz P4. Oh wait...ow...my leg...!

      It's exciting to finally see AMD come out with some chips that can compete with the Pentium M in power usage though - the XP M just wasn't q

  • Hmm just now released (Score:3, Informative)

    by OverlordQ ( 264228 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @07:13PM (#11905564) Journal
    I swear they started back in January [slashdot.org]

  • Pretty smart processor naming... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Infinityis ( 807294 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @07:14PM (#11905569) Homepage
    If you tell someone about your computer processor, and you cough slightly while you say the processor name, you end up with a Turing machine. If only it were true...

  • Intel / AMD = Microsoft / ??? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 10, 2005 @07:14PM (#11905570)
    I really wish we could complete that ratio.

    No, I'm not saying that Intel is as bad as Microsoft (although those recent anti-trust actions might make one wonder). I'm just saying that look how well things have turned out for the consumer on the processor front because there's a viable alternative.

    Wouldn't it be cool to have a competitor for Microsoft the way AMD competes with Intel?

  • So that means... (Score:3, Funny)

    by game kid ( 805301 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @07:18PM (#11905600) Homepage
    ...my new laptop won't lower sperm count [medicalnewstoday.com]? Seriously, I can't stand putting a hot laptop on (oddly enough) my lap, so they become tabletops instead for me.

    These Turions better generate less heat or I'd have lost all hope. And feeling in my groin.

    • Re:So that means... (Score:3, Informative)

      by klevin ( 11545 )
      The vast majority of sperm killed by using a laptop on your lap are because the the heat buildup caused by sitting with your legs pressed together (something like 75% of the increase in temp). The laptop contributes relativley little to the heat buildup.

      Any guy who routinely sits with his legs pressed together (as opposed to the common, more relaxed posture) runs a higher risk of infertility/low sperm count.

    • Re:So that means... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Animaether ( 411575 )
      It's modded Funny for obvious reasons, but I think it should be noted that this is in fact not a laptop; it is a notebook.

      Then again, I don't know when I last saw an actual laptop. The terms laptop and notebook have been used as if they're synonyms for quite a while now.

      The difference between the two should be obvious. One is designed for use truly 'on the go' - on your lap when riding the bus if need be. That'd be the laptop.
      A notebook, on the other hand, may be portable and easy to carry around - but is
    • For home or office use - check out the iLap
      http://www.raindesigninc.com/ilap.html
      (I wouldn't travel with it in my bag)

  • Silent computing applications (Score:5, Insightful)

    by apharov ( 598871 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @07:18PM (#11905602)
    This should be a very interesting product for the silent computing community (check SilentPCRReview [silentpcreview.com]) if some manufacturer decides to make desktop motherboards for it. People are already using Mobile Athlon XP's and Pentium-M's in desktop computers because of their relatively low heat output.

    My own wish would be to some day have a passively air cooled computer. Running an Athlon64 passively with only one big slow (=nearly silent) case fan is already feasible with carefully managed airflow inside the computer case. Turion could be theoretically cool enough to cool with convection airflow if the potential is realized with wellmade motherboards.

  • Digital AlphaBook - 64 bit notebook in 1998 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BiggRanger ( 787488 ) <BiggRangerNO@SPAMtds.net> on Thursday March 10, 2005 @07:23PM (#11905643) Journal
    I have a Digital AlphaBook, the first 64 bit notebook computer! 266 MHz Alpha Processor (EV4 I think) 128 Meg RAM, and runs OpenVMS! Best of all I got it back in 1998. Nobody was even thinking 64 bit desktops back then. And you know what, it still rocks. I've rebuilt the battery pack and still use it today. You should see poeples face when VMS is booting up and it goes into the DEC windows manager.
    • Too bad they don't make them anymore! The future for a new OpenVMS/Itanium notebook looks extremely bad. HP does not want to kick Microsoft's a$$ with a real good operating system for the desktop and notebook market. And Intel dropped all plans to produce an Itanium for desktop machines (Itanium was suppose to be The 64-bit replacement for the Pentium!), not to mention any plans for a notebook version of the Itanium. AMD understands that a processor has to cover a broad market. Well done, AMD!
  • The reason why Pentium-M is as performant as it is is in part because it has 2MB of on-die cache. Don't expect miracles from a chip that has a half or even one fourth of that.
    • L2 size is _far_ the only measurement of CPU performance. Also, the first generation of Pentium M had only 1MB of L2.
    • Umm...the performance benefit of that 2MB L2 cashe is not that much better than 1MB. It is maybe a 3-7% increase in performance. Granted that is Intel vs. Intel not Intel vs. AMD since AMD just released this CPU. AMD CPUs have usually shown better efficiency when it has come down to computation power with 512kb and 1MB L2 cashe and Intel has had troubles even with 2MB L2 cashe due to the memory controler being on the motherboard and not on the CPU.

      If AMD were to up their L2 cashe to 2MB or higher, the p

    • Re:1MB max of L2 cache - suckage (Score:5, Informative)

      by Tarqwak ( 599548 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @08:21PM (#11906078)
      2 MB L2 cache doesn't do much by itself, give that Dothan core a 533 MHz FSB instead of the 400 MHz Banias was on and it starts to shine (and of course the power consumption goes up too). Speaking of which, AMD Turion 64 (and Athlon 64) have memory controller in the core not in north bridge like Intel processors, so that 25/35W CPU power envelope includes MC overhead too.

      BTW, most 512 kB L2 Athlon 64 CPUs run circles over P4 3.6+ GHz with 2 MB cache in gaming benches, so cache alone means squat ;)

      And it looks like it's going to be two years [ixbt.com] until Pentium M range gets 64-bit core. AMD Turion 64 already has 16/16 INT/XMM registers, SSE/SSE2/SSE3 support etc.
    • L1 cache is more important than L2. FAR more important. Pentium-M has 32+32kB. Turion has 64+64kB. In case you didn't notice, that's twice as much. (Your math was ok on the L2 cache, but still...) Don't expect miracles from P-M, a chip that has half as much L1 as the Turion.
      • I thought the bandwidth between RAM and the processor was the main limitation of the current processors, not bandwidth within the processor itself.

        Besides, P-M has a maximum power dissipation of 24W (or 12W for ULV version) whereas Turion is 35W. Those P-M laptops already run pretty darn hot. I'm not sure I'm willing to buy a laptop that's 40% "warmer".
        • Here's what I'm thinking.

          Pentium M: L1 cache 32+32 (64Kb total), L2 cache off chip 2Mb, Northbridge + Southbridge chipset

          AMD Turion: L1 cache 64+64 (128Kb total), L2 cache on chip 1Mb, Single-chip chipset.

          So, yeah, Pentium-M by *itself* will consume 22 Watts, but you've got to add in the North+South chipset... guessing it's about 10 watts or more.

          Turion is basically 25 or 35 Watts, plus a single chip chipset I'd guess would only have 5 watts usage since the memory controller is on the Turion itself.

          So
      • Pentium-M has 32+32kB. Turion has 64+64kB [of L1 cache].

        Fine, but if you're running 64-bit code on the Turion and 32-bit on the P-M, then the effective size (number of items stored) is the same.

    • The reason why Pentium-M is as performant as it is is in part because it has 2MB of on-die cache. Don't expect miracles from a chip that has a half or even one fourth of that.

      My AMD Athlon XP only has 256KB of L2 cache, you insensitive clod!

  • kind of late? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @07:49PM (#11905827)
    Aren't AMD kind-of late? When one talks about mobile computing, "centrino" comes to mind. Right?
    • Aren't AMD kind-of late? When one talks about mobile computing, "centrino" comes to mind. Right?

      No, "heavy suitcase" and "outlet in airport to recharge goddamned battery that failed in a middle of a save" is what comes to mind when one talks about mobile computing.

      • Re:kind of late? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by tomstdenis ( 446163 )
        I dunno about peeps like you but I use the battery in a pinch only anyways...The real benefit of a laptop [imho] is just the ability to carry a computer around with you that's less bulky than a desktop.

        I don't see the value of cracking a laptop open while walking around or something [even a small one] cuz the likelyhood of dropping it [at least for me] is too high.

        So I'm likely to have a plug available [even when I lug my american laptop to france for business for example...].

        As for the issue of "amd not
        • No, the real benefit of a laptop is being able to read slashdot while I'm taking a crap. 802.11 is nice, but if there was no such thing, I would have installed a jack next to the toilet.
    • Turion ... Centurion ... Centrino?

      Admittedly the average laptop buyer probably doesn't care about Latin or the Roman army, but perhaps that's how the name was derived?

      People keep asking me if my Latop has 'Centrino'. Given that it has a big Apple logo on it, I feel obliged to explain what Centrino is - it's not WiFi in general, just an Intel chipset. Maybe AMD were hoping for a bit of that brand-name to rub off?

  • Pronunciation? (Score:4, Funny)

    by sabNetwork ( 416076 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @09:22PM (#11906477)
    I'm not really into carnivorous plants, so I hadn't heard this word before.

    Here's a WAV pronunciation. [bartleby.com]

    tur-e-on

    Not very phonetic. Shouldn't product names be easy to read without hearing them?

    I imagine that I'll hear many tur-yun's, tur-eye-un's, and too-rye-un's.

  • Turion= 2 chips in 1 (Score:4, Informative)

    by beesquee ( 674821 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @10:19PM (#11906844)
    Keep in mind these chips have integrated memory controllers and northbridges unlike Pentium-m's. Northbridges alone use about 5W of power so this could be subtracted from their consumption for a more accurate comparision of the two.
  • Ah, but the question is does it pass the Turing Test [wikipedia.org]?
  • CENTRINO IS NOT A PROCESSOR! The Pentium-M is the processor and Centrino is the WHOLE package.....chipset, Wireless-G and other parts make whe whole of a Centrino laptop. Everyone may refer to Centrino as a processor, but that does not mean it's right!

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