AMD intros low power Athlon Geode family

NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR had tried to dump its Geode processors for years and AMD snapped up the line last year.

Now AMD has released a fresh range of Geode X86 compatible chips targeted at products from low power embedded systems to high performing servers, the firm said.

It has also renumbered the chips. In fact, the body of the AMD press release devotes far more attention to the re-numbering than to anything else in a new scheme that it says is based on the Performance Power Rating (PPR).

The products are the Geode NX 1500@6W, and the NX1750@14W. It has also renamed the current Geode GX2 chip to the 533@1.1W processor, as well as releasing the GX 466@0.9W and the Geode 500@1.0W processor.

All these new cognomens are designed to test the touch typing skills of hacks everywhere.

If you think that the NX1500@6W is anything to do with frequency, think again - that device operates at 1GHz. The NX1750@14W operates at 1.4GHz. And the GX533@1.1W runs at 400MHz.

AMD explains that the model numbers are based on benchmarks developed by Synchromesh Computing and signify the "processor's relevant performance rating followed by its power usage".

We trust that's clear. µ