At a press conference in Tokyo last week, AMD officially disclosed more details of its next-generation, open platform for notebook computing. Named "Puma," the platform is designed to deliver battery life, graphics and video processing enhancements and improved overall system performance. The Puma platform is expected to build on the successful launches of the AMD M690 mobile chipset and 65-nm process-based AMD Turion 64 X2 dual-core mobile technology.

The key technologies that comprise Puma are AMD's next-generation notebook processor, codenamed " Griffin," together with a next-generation RS780 mobile chipset. The Griffin microprocessor will deliver a number of new capabilities that will enhance battery life and overall mobile computing performance. An AMD HyperTransport and memory controllers integrated in the processor silicon, operate on a power plane that is separated from the processor cores, enabling the cores to go into reduced power states.

Dynamic, performance-scaling offers enhanced battery life with reduced power consumption through separate voltage planes so that each core operates at different frequency and voltage. AMD's HyperTransport 3.0 is said to more than triple the peak I/O bandwidth.

Griffin will be employed in AMD's forthcoming RS780 notebook. Based on PCI Express Generation 2 and the HyperTransport 3.0 specifications, the RS780 is expected to enhance notebook computing by delivering significant new features such as: Motherboard DirectX 10 graphics processing, energy-efficient high-definition multimedia support with the Unified Video Decoder, and integrated multi-monitor support with DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort.