AMD showcased in Japan today its new reference notebook platform, powered by a dual core CPU and offering more than five hours' battery life. The company urges to win support among notebook manufacturers for its forthcoming mobile CPUs. Reporting from Japan, the PC Watch website said that the new platform is named "Yamato", and its development began in Japan last June, with the contribution of AMD, Nvidia and IBM Japan.

The reference platform includes a dual core CPU, DDR2 SDRAM, and an NVIDIA chipset. The prototype also offered Wireless LAN support, and WUXGA monitor port. Moreover, AMD showcased a module that monitors power consumption.

AMD showcased a simultaneous reproduction of three different videos, in order to check the utilization of the new dual-core CPU. The notebook reproduced WMV9 1,280?720, MPEG-2 720?480 and H.264 1,920?816 video files simultaneously, and the average CPU utilization was 50%.

AMD also provided information about its product roadmap for the 2006. The company will focus on thermal and power management technologies for the notebooks, powered by dual-core CPUs and DDR2 memory. The chipsets will be Windows Vista-ready, will include support for the "AeroGlass" video technologies and Microsoft's Trusted Platform Module (TPM 1.2) to secure communications and applications. In addition, the notebooks will offer 802.11a/b/g wireless connectivity.

In addition to AMD's processors, in particular upcoming dual-core Turion 64 chips, the platform comprises chipsets from VIA, SiS, ATI and Nvidia; wireless technology from Airgo, Broadcom and Atheros; and LAN chips from Marvell, Broadcom and Realtek.