AMD launches Tigris and Congo notebook platforms

San Francisco, Calif. AMD has introduced a “mainstream” notebook platform designed to provide improved performance for multimedia applications and 3D gaming. Tigris – which has already been adopted by 8 OEMs – supports full 1080p HD playback and offers up to 25 percent longer battery life (55+ minutes) than previous AMD mobile platforms.

In addition, Tigris enables 62 percent faster wireless downloads and facilitates a 43 percent increase in speed for iPhone file conversions.

“The mainstream notebook platform delivers fast, responsive performance on Windows 7, even when enjoying the stunning detail of HD audio and videos on a 17 inch screen,” AMD spokesperson Bob Grim told TG Daily.

“Although the platform is designed for mobilility, it provides a full PC experience and, unlike netbooks, doesn’t sacrifice options that are important for 3D gaming and other multimedia applications. For example, the platform features DX10.1 graphic support, along with a 45nm ‘Stars’ core that offers improved digital media performance. It is also capable of achieving up to 42 percent better performance when using digital media applications.”

Grim added that AMD engineers had developed a number of low power innovations for the mainstream platform, including PSI support, frame buffer compression and dynamic backlight reduction.

“The mainstream notebook platform facilitates a 25 percent battery life increase in comparison with previous AMD mobile platforms. We accomplished this by upgrading the CPU and integrated chipset to allow new UVD power states, IGP frequency and voltage scaling, as well as dynamic pixel and display clock reduction.”

It should be noted that AMD has also unveiled a second generation, ultrathin notebook platform – codenamed Congo.

The thin platform offers multi-core performance, ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics, a dual channel memory controller, low-profile BGA package for processors and an 800 MHz hyper-transport link.