AMD Goes Mobile with 'Turion'

Advanced Micro Devices is hoping to break into Intel's lock on the mobile computer chip market with its new line of processors, called "Turion".

While the dictionary may define Turion as the "young shoot of a plant," officials at AMD thought the word invoked a sense of the "open road" or a "tour." Either way, the announcement is a direct response to the success of Intel's Centrino processor, which will be updated later this month.

"Today our strength is in the full-sized notebook, or desktop-replacement, space," said AMD mobile marketing manager Bahr Mahoney. "This (the Turion processor) product is optimized for mobility."

The Turion 64 Mobile Technology will be aimed at thin and light notebooks, as its Athlon processor is already used for full-sized models.

Details on price and speed of the processor were not released to the press, although notebooks based on the processor should be available by the summer, AMD says.