AMD's Puma platform goes live

AMD has introduced its Puma notebook platform and announced the availability of products based on it at the Computex event in Taipei today. Puma brings together the new Turion ultra-mobile processor, AMD 7-series chipset, the Radeon HD 3000 range of integrated and discrete graphics solutions with support for hybrid graphics technology and a variety of wireless-networking controllers.

The Puma platform is an important milestone for AMD as it’s the first one with ATI completely integrated since it acquired the company in 2006. AMD’s goal is to capture 80 percent of the notebook market, meaning it will be delivering multiple configurations to cover the largest portion of the market but likely cede niches such as high-speed notebooks and UMPCs to Intel.

The company claims that there are already about 100 different laptops designed to use the Puma platform including models from Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu Siemens and Hewlett-Packard. Prices for the laptops will reportedly range from about $700 up to $2,000, with some of them appearing on retail shelves starting this week.

The chip maker is playing down speed as the sole differentiator of the platform and instead talks about better graphics capabilities through its own integrated and discrete graphics solutions – an area where Intel has struggled in recent years – without driving up power consumption. According to them, Puma will offer three times the 3D performance, 5 times the HD quality, and 40% faster wireless than Intel's solution. We’ll have to wait and see if they can live up to their bold claims when Intel delivers Centrino 2 in mid-July.