More news on the Windows 8 hardware front. AMD, Intel’s biggest rival is preparing a chip called Hondo, which will ship with Windows 8 tablets later this year.

AMD Hondo Chip Specs

It’s based on a 4.5W APU with 1 – 2 low voltage Bobcat cores and an on-die DX11 GPU built on a 40nm process. A 40nm mature platform can produce lower power silicon than a 28nm. AMD is producing that 40nm chip right now. There is no time to wait more for the large 28nm mature production.

The Bobcat Cores

For AMD to compete in the tablet markets, they had to change architectures, to wit, stop relying on Phenom II derived architectures. The Phenom II and its relatives currently span a range of TDPs from 9W to 140W, and they are at the lower end of that spectrum, meaning that there were some very low clock speeds and performance targets. Getting down to 1W was out of the question without a separate design.

So AMD came up with was a core called Bobcat, which was initially targeted for netbooks, notebooks, and entry-level desktops. Architecturally Bobcat is a step ahead of Atom: but while still dual-issue, it features an out-of-order execution engine making it the Pentium Pro to Atom’s Pentium.

Windows 8 tablet

Which brings us back to Windows 8. Microsoft is betting heavily on the new design. There is the Metro UI, the ARM factor, and other programs and apps that will be redesigned to handle the new technology. Along with Microsoft, AMD and Intel both have a lot riding on the Windows 8 tablet platform, since they’ve become behind the 8-ball in the mobile space. So new chip technology is just a new manifestation of the marketing wars that are taking place to make the Windows 8 product viable in more ways than one. Microsoft needs Windows 8 to inject new consumer vision and confidence in their products. Windows 7 and Office dominate, they are behind in the mobile technology. They would like to remedy that.

Source:  Anantech