AMD announces sampling of the new AMD Alchemy Solutions chipset with revolutionary architecture for Wireless LAN.

AMD (NYSE:AMD) recently announced widespread availability for sampling of the AMD Alchemy Solutions Am1772 Wireless LAN chipset and a mini-PCI card reference design kit (RDK). A revolutionary two-chip 802.11b wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) solution with next-generation architecture, the Am1772 chipset will provide customers the building blocks for an outstanding long-term wireless strategy. Customers who use the Am1772 chipset in their laptop computer, handheld computer or other portable computing device will be able to significantly lower their system cost, provide longer battery life, and lower host CPU utilization--the amount of CPU processing power needed to support WLAN connectivity. Widely available sampling of the Am1772 chipset and RDK is scheduled for this month and AMD plans production availability in Q1 2003.

"Collaborating with our customers and identifying their needs led our design team to create the remarkably innovative Am1772 chipset and a mini-PCI card reference design kit, a high-integration, low-power, high-performance solution," said Dr. William Edwards, AMD's vice president and general manager for the Personal Connectivity Solutions Group. "This will be AMD's bold first step into the wireless market, and the first of several wireless products we plan to introduce over the next 12 months. Ultimately, we intend to continue to provide industry-leading wireless technology for our customers, and to integrate that technology into our MIPS technology-based AMD Alchemy Solutions system-on-a-chip (SOC) processors."

Leading Wireless LAN card vendors have already expressed support for the Am1772 WLAN chipset.

"The Am1772 WLAN chipset will offer significant benefits to us as a customer," said Steven Chang, wireless R&D manager of Ambit. "We see this as a real breakthrough in design and a clear indication that AMD has a well-planned strategy and is a serious player in wireless 802.11b solutions."

"AMD's architectural design is impressive and will offer our customers a reliable, robust solution," said Chaney Wang, director of R&D division at Askey. "Their reference design and use of auto-calibration technology will allow us to bring products to market quickly while reducing both manufacturing costs and test time."

"Judging on the most important metrics-system costs, power efficiency, processor utilization, reception sensitivity, transmitting power and footprint-AMD will clearly offer an industry-leading solution with the Am1772 WLAN chipset," said James Hu of Z-Com, senior marketing and sales director. "Also, AMD's solution is well-positioned for future chipset integration."

Designed to enable customers to make easy transitions to future 802.11 medium access controller (MAC) enhancements, the Am1772 wireless chipset is a Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) solution that utilizes baseband processor and a MAC, with a descriptor-based direct memory access (DMA) host interface. The CMOS design helps reduce power consumption for the mini-PCI-based reference design to 134 mA while receiving and 232mA while transmitting--a significant improvement over competing designs resulting in increased battery life in mobile applications. In addition, the highly integrated solution reduces the number of additional components and enables a very compact design.

The Am1772 chipset is comprised of the AMD Alchemy Solutions Am1770 Radio Frequency transceiver and the AMD Alchemy Solutions Am1771 baseband processor and MAC. The Am1770 transceiver utilizes Direct Down Conversion, which eliminates the requirement for an Intermediate Frequency (IF) chip. The Am1771 chipset is an integrated baseband/MAC that features on-chip hardware acceleration designed to help significantly reduce host CPU load. The use of the baseband processor and MAC with a descriptor-based DMA architecture also benefits the customer by enabling lower system costs through the elimination of the on-chip micro-controller and the associated non-volatile (Flash) memory and SRAM. The use of auto-calibration technology also reduces the need for costly and time-consuming system calibration during the manufacturing process.

Widespread availability for sampling of the Am1772 chipset and RDK is scheduled for this month and production availability is planned in Q1 2003.