AMD is coming up with Phenom 2 in May

Triple-core and Quad-core and 2MB cache is not a dream for notebooks anymore

We have always seen AMD a little slow in the notebook market, and almost non-existent in the netbook sector. These two markets have long been dominated by Intel. This scenario should change shortly, thanks to AMD’s plans of coming up with its next-generation mobile platform code-named Danube in May, 2010 – as reported by Xbitlabs. We already reported the plan for Q2 of 2010, and Q2 it is.

Danube will be based on AMD’s latest K10 micro-architecture, same logic as the Tigris. Like the Tigris, Danube will also run on M880G (RS880M) with built-in ATI Radeon 4200-series and support DirectX 10.1 (no DirectX 11 as of yet); but additionally the Denube will sport the SB820M I/O controller that will host a host of I/O ports like the 14 USB 2.0 ports (you’ve heard right!), RAID support, Ethernet and a few. Xbitlabs also reports of no chipset without an integrated graphics card. You will be able to use a separate discrete card though. There is also a low-cost K9-based version coming up for the budget notebooks.

Now let’s talk about the processors the Danube platform will bring - first up is the Phenom II Quad-core mobile P920 processor which has 2MB of cache memory, 128-bit FPU precision, and DDR3 1066MHz support. Next in line is the Phenom II triple-core P820 mobile processor which is basically similar to the P920 as discussed earlier, but with one core having disabled. The mobile P820 processor will have 1.5Mb of cache, 128-bit FPU precision, DDR3 1066MHz support, and hyper transport at 3.6GT/s.

Then there are the Turion ll, Athlon ll and the V-series. Click on the figure to see the detailed specs. All these chips will be based on 45nm design, which means we will have to wait untill late next year or even till 2011 to see the 32nm ones. Also the 45nm won’t be energy savers like the 32nm chips and will guzzle up to 45w of power. An improvement will be on the memory management front with the added support for DDR3L. Also Danube will support over-clocking, which Intel has been offering for quite some time now.