AMD Positions Itself for Growing Handheld Market

Handheld portable computers and communicators are likely to take on many different shapes in the coming years. However, they’re all likely to feature one size: small. To achieve this, device manufacturers will look for richer functionality and greater integration from their current suppliers of silicon engines.

Advanced Micro Devices, a leading supplier of a broad range of integrated circuits, microprocessors, and other components, is aggressively positioning itself to catch the upswing in interest for low-power, feature-rich handheld devices. These include pocket computers, digital assistants, smart wireless telephones, and electronic books.

AMD’s efforts in this area are concentrated on its Elan Family of silicon engines that incorporate support for the industry standard PC/AT architecture together with a high performance 32-bit X86 compatible microprocessor—all on a single chip. The first version, dubbed the Am386SC300, includes a memory control unit, an ISA bus controller, a real time clock, and DMA controllers.

The Am386SC300 also includes support for two PCMCIA 2.0 slots, a parallel port, internal graphics controller, and a local bus controller. The result of this is a single board solution, slightly larger in size than a credit-card, capable of supporting DOS, Windows, and GEOS today, and Microsoft’s WinPad as it becomes available.

This level of integration also helps in keeping power requirements down. The Elan is capable of supporting mixed voltages enabling the core processor to run at 3.3 V, while enabling other peripherals to use 5 V for their operation.

Advanced Micro Devices
David Tuhy
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Austin, TX 78741
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