AMD Curve enters Netbook market

"Sina Science and Technology," Beijing time July 7 Morning news, according to foreign media today, although AMD has repeatedly expressed no intention to enter the netbook market, but because the PC manufacturers use its chips to produce netbooks, AMD accidentally involved in this market.

Just two weeks after Acer's Gateway unveiled a netbook with AMD chips, European Medion began selling "Akoya Mini E1312" Netbooks in Monday to configure Low-power flash 210U chips.

AMD has ridiculed the size of netbooks too small to provide complete PC functionality. The screen of a netbook usually does not exceed 12 inches and has a smaller keyboard size. Netbooks mainly run basic applications, such as surfing the internet and word processing, usually starting at a price of 299 dollars.

Although AMD reiterated that it would not enter the netbook market, the tone has eased. AMD spokeswoman Taylor said that AMD's access to the netbook market was "purely accidental" and that AMD would not limit the way PC makers use its chips, and that the low energy consumption of the flash-chip was the reason it was applied to netbooks, "We never developed a netbook platform", But the use of AMD chips in netbooks is positive because it provides consumers with more choices. The flash-chip is the low-end chip of AMD for the mainstream PC. Besides netbooks, AMD's Low-power chips are also being used in All-in-one PCs, Taylor said.

The Akoya Mini E1312 is configured with a 11.6-inch display, 160GB hard drive, 1GB memory, and M690E chipset, which is priced at 399 euros (about 557 US dollars) in Germany. Nathan Brookwood, chief analyst at the market research firm Insight 64, said Akoya Mini E1312 's performance exceeded the Nessen Brook netbook, "a set of flash-long chips, Netbooks with higher performance integrated chipsets and graphics cards are more performance-driven than netbooks in some applications.

Despite the accidental entry into the netbook market, AMD will continue to focus on developing notebook chips with higher processing and graphic performance, Taylor said. According to Brooke Wood, AMD is doing this because it prevents the netbook chip from pulling down its profit margins.

AMD has developed a Low-power Athlon Neo chip for ultra-thin notebooks, and has released a dual-core neo-chip. Intel has launched a CULV (ultra-low voltage) chip to compete with AMD for the Slim notebook market.