AMD begins shipping chips for notebooks

NEW YORK: Advanced Micro Devices Inc. said it has begun to ship a new chip for laptop computers built on a new 90-nanometer manufacturing process, which lets it add to performance by shrinking chips or increasing design features.

The Sunnyvale, California-based semiconductor maker competes with Intel Corp. in chipmaking. Intel began shipping 90-nanometer chips earlier this year. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.

AMD said its first 90-nanometer chip is a version of its Mobile Athlon 64 processor, and that notebook manufacturers are expected to launch systems based on the new processor in the coming months.

The company said it expects to ship similar processors for desktop computers later this quarter, and 90-nanometer Opteron processors later this year.