Future AMD Chips Will Power Down To Save Battery

Written by Adam Gosling

Monday, 05 June 2006

In an effort to increase the battery life of mobile devices such as laptop computers, AMD has revealed its processor roadmap for mobile CPUs includes technology that will allow it to power down in response to load. The new mobile designs, slated for the second half of next year will share a technology AMD is building for its server processors, according to press reports emanating from the company’s Analysts Day briefings last week. The processors will be able to dynamically vary the frequency they run at depending on the workload. Vary it to the point of completely shutting down one or even both cores say the reports. Normal CPU behaviour is to run continuously on a redundant task which appears as the System Idle Process under windows Task Manager, for example. Intel has its SpeedStep technology which allows the system to dynamically adjust processor voltage and core frequency. It seems the AMD technology would take this a further step by allow the system to completely shut down the CPU, memory controller or system links as demanded by the system requirements. Related news items Lenovo Recalls More Batteries -01/03/2007 The Notebook Goes Live! -08/01/2007 Exploding Laptop Video -13/11/2006 AMD-Based Dell Inspiron 1501 Launched in Aus -06/11/2006 Dell Has AMD Latitiude Planned -06/11/2006 Newer news items ACMA To Auction 2010-2025 MHz Band -22/08/2006 One Million Order For One Laptop -26/07/2006 Motorola To Trial WiMax handsets -25/07/2006 Google GDrive Info Leaked? -10/07/2006 Toshiba Announces 200GB Laptop Drive -05/06/2006 Older news items LG.Philips Cracks The 100 Inch LCD -04/06/2006 Samsung Shows Off Smarter Screens -04/06/2006 Wi-Fi Arrives On TV -30/05/2006 Big Boost For Low-Cost TV Phones -28/05/2006 Why Samsung Got Rid Of The Hard Disk -24/05/2006 Tag This Now: