AMD's Turion for notebooks competes with Pentium M

AMD has today officially revealed its secret weapon in attempting to challenge Intel's dominance in the thin-and-light notebook market - its new mobile processor brand Turion.

AMD has, thus far, offered several notebook processors - Mobile Athlon 64, the Athlon 64 for Notebooks, the Mobile Sempron and the Mobile Athlon XP-M. However, nothing has been squarely aimed at the Pentium-M chip and Centrino platform so far - but that is about the change.

To be introduced some time in the first half of this year, the Turion is a 64-bit processor that should be comparable in terms of speed and battery performance with Intel's Centrino platform. Details beyond that are pretty light, but it is expected that AMD will merely launch a processor in the form of the Turion, not a complete platform as in the Centrino. However, AMD will likely work with its partners to provide an impressive package for consumers.

Meanwhile, Intel is expected to launch its third generation Centrino platform, code-named "Sonoma" later this month.