Outside The Ultrabook

By Doug Olenick On Jun 18 2012 - 4:01am

NEW YORK – Intel may have created the Ultrabook category, but AMD is starting to fight back with the introduction last month of its Trinity Accelerated Processing Unit.

Leslie Sobon, AMD’s product platform marketing VP, said Trinity is intended for use in ultrathin laptop designs, but unlike Intel, AMD has not issued a set of specification for vendors to follow to develop such products. Instead the chip maker is allowing computer vendors to take any liberties they wish to create an ultrathin laptop.

Sobon said AMD’s primary goal with Trinity is to enable a $600 or lower priced thin and light laptop that has instant-on capability, which she said is the most-requested feature consumers have for this category.

PC vendors are also taking some liberties with their designs to deliver laptops that fall just outside of Intel’s Ultrabook specification.

Hewlett-Packard has introduced its Sleekbook line that uses the AMD processor, and Sony has its Z series featuring an Intel quad-core, full voltage CPU.