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As if Intel didn't have enough to contend with from Qualcomm, its Atom flagship will now face a new challenge from veteran rival AMD, which unveiled its Yukon and Congo ranges this week - though the company says it is not targeting the MID market any time soon, and will focus mainly on the 'ultraportable'. It positions this category a step up, in functionality and price, from the wildly popular, but margin-squeezing, netbook.

AMD's new 65nm chipset will be released for ultra-small notebooks next year, but Randy Allen, head of the computing solutions group, is sceptical about MIDs, at least for 2009-2010. "Of all the opportunities we could go after, we have eliminated microprocessors for smartphones ... for the foreseeable future," he said. "We don't expect the MID market to become meaningful relative to other opportunities we can address."

This is despite forecasts that Intel Atom will be the only product boosting overall PC processor shipments in 2009 - Barclays Capital says the market will grow by 2% next year, but without Atom it would decline. However, netbooks and MIDs will have a downward impact on margins at chipmakers and device vendors, and AMD said its primary goal in 2009 will be to enhance profits rather than volumes.

There will be two main families for mobile notebooks. First is single-core Yukon, which will target mini-notebooks that dissipate no more than 25W of power, with first devices, called Huron, shipping early next year. These will be followed by the Yukon Geneva, a 45nm chip, in 2010, and 32nm platforms will follow in 2011. The second family is Congo, which will have multiple cores. First, the 65nm Conesus will support two cores for mini-notebooks, and appear in late 2009.

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