AMD releases Turion 64s, issues new number game

CHIP FIRM AMD is whetting up the axe it is grinding by forecasting that several manufacturers will use its Turion 64 notebook microprocessor, which it released today.

The firm said machines using the Turion 64 will be available in shops this month, a little earlier than we expected.

And AMD said the chips will be called the ML-37, ML-34, ML-32, ML-30, MT-34, MT-32 and MT-30, as if our poor brains weren't befuddled enough by chip makers and their number games.

The second letter relates to higher mobility, whatever that it is, and will get up to the letter Z, AMD said. The M stands for mobility, which is at least easy to remember.

The chips start off at $354 for the highest performing chip, whatever that means.

Averatec, Benq and others will also plump for Turions.

Technical details are scant so far. We'll harass AMD at CeBIT later on today.

What we know is that the 35 watt ML-37 runs at 2GHz with 1MB of L2 ache, the 34 is a 1.8GHz chip with the same amount of cache, while the ML-28 has 512K of L2 cache and clocks at 1.6GHz.

The MT range run at a rather cool rev E, so support SSE3. The MT-40 is expected in the second quarter while the MT-42 is slated for the third quarter. Thanks to a reader for this.

There is also a fresh roadmap rev out on the AMD site, and that can be found at the AMD site. Here.