Toshiba gives new confidence to AMD CPUs

Tokyo – With a decision reminiscent of the one taken by Dell last year, Toshiba has cut the exclusive bond that tied it to Intel for the supply of processors. Soon, the world’s fourth-largest laptop maker will be launching some notebook models based on AMD’s chips on the market.

Toshiba has made it known that, at least initially, will use AMD’s CPUs in some lower-mid-range notebooks aimed at both the consumer and business markets. According to the Japanese newsmagazine Nikkei, laptops equipped with AMD processors they should cost about sixty euros less on average compared to comparable Intel-based models.

The Japanese giant has not provided other details on the AMD-based computers in gestation, except to say that these will arrive on the North American and European markets during the summer. By the end of the year the company expects that 20% of its notebooks destined for Western markets will use AMD chips .

Toshiba had ceased manufacturing notebooks based on AMD’s processors in 2001 . In the documents filed by AMD in the antitrust trial against Intel, the Sunnyvale chipmaker claims that Toshiba had abandoned its processors after receiving “a substantial sum of money” from Intel in the form of “sales subsidies conditional on the exclusive use of Intel processors. “.

While experts agree that, over the past year, Intel has managed to regain the technology leadership in the x86 processor industry, the moves by Dell and Toshiba show that the price-performance ratio of AMD-based solutions is still competitive in many cases : Toshiba, for example, expects that the partial switch to AMD’s processors will allow it to reduce its overall hardware procurement cost by at least 10%.

The choice of Toshiba may also have influenced AMD’s promising roadmap for the mobile market which involves the development of a wireless platform potentially able to compete with Intel’s Centrino and a technology, codenamed Fusion, for integrating the GPU on multicore processors.

Update (2.30 pm) – In these hours AMD has released a press release that provides some more details on the new AMD-based notebook offer. An excerpt is shown below.
Toshiba is preparing to launch three new notebooks of the Satellite line based on the AMD mobile platform. By combining advanced performance processors with outstanding graphics capabilities, Toshiba will enrich its Satellite product family with systems based on AMD Turion 64 X2 dual-core mobile technology and the AMD M690 chipset. Toshiba, one of the largest notebook manufacturers in the world, plans to begin deliveries of these new models to the consumer segment in time for the opening of the next school year.
Toshiba intends to carry out the initial launch of AMD-based notebooks in the US and Europe. Toshiba joins the group of OEMs adhering to the AMD “Better by Design” program which allows major manufacturers to design notebooks with superior features in terms of performance, graphics and wireless connectivity combined with greater energy efficiency which translates into an extension of the battery autonomy.