AMD has subtly knocked netbooks for the last few months as Intel's Atom has dominated the low-cost mini-form factor market, but the CPU maker has had something more powerful up its sleeve. Its Yukon platform for ultrathin notebooks. Instead of aiming at 7 to 10-inch size mini-notebooks with small screens and cramped keyboards, AMD wants to offer the best of both the mini-notebook and mainstream notebook worlds in a affordable ultraportable with its envisioned ultrathin notebooks. Think a thin, light notebook with a 12 or 13 inch display and a full-featured PC experience with high-defintion capabilities yet for an affordable price. The starting at $699 12-inch HP Dv2, which was also announced today, is the first of the ultrathin laptops that AMD's new platform is found in. See the full specs and images of that system here. The AMD 1.6GHz Athlon Neo processor is the first processor in this new family. Paired with the processor is an option of ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450 Premium Graphics or ATI Radeon X1250 Graphics. With a leg up on Intel's Atom both of the chipset configurations are capable of high definition playback with ATI Avivo HD technology, it also supports HDMI capabilities for outputting to a larger display or TV. AMD is without a doubt touting that this platform is more powerful than Intel's Atom processor (see our full Q+A with AMD's David McAffee). Even though we are starting to see our fair share of 12-inch laptops with Intel Atom processors inside (i.e the Dell Inspiron Mini 12 and ASUS' S121), AMD is claiming that is Neo processor gets 148 percent more the performance. See the chart below.
While AMD is not releasing details on the pricing of the platform, it expect it to be found in $600 priced notebooks. As for battery life, AMD expects the HP dv2 with the platform to get around 4 hours and that it could be 3 to 4 hours depending on the system. Check out the gallery below with AMD's detailed slides on the new platform.
