We can be confident that AMD can at least beat Atom. In all honesty, Atom sucks compared to Nano and other CPUs in it's class. I'm sure an old Duron-like processor can take Atom in real world benches...

I don't get why the hype regarding Atom continues. I think people were excited about it before it was released because everyone thought it might deliver Pentium M clocks and IPC with ARM power draw and prices; the reality is far from that.

It's still a decent chip, but it's not really much of an improvement in performance or power compared to the 4-year-old Celeron M. In the ultraportable laptop space, VIA Nano will greatly outperform it while drawing comparable power. (People who say the two aren't comparable as far as power draw are comparing the 1.8 GHz Nano, which will be targeted to desktops, with the Atom Z5x0 Silverthorne line which won't show up in ultraportables. The 1.0-1.3GHz Nano parts only draw slightly more juice (5-8W) than the Diamondville chips (3-4W)).

AMD and VIA are definitely in a good spot to compete in this space, especially given Intel's delays and unwillingness to cannibalize more profitable and much-costlier Core-architecture sales. (Things may change, of course, when Lincroft comes around.)

I just hope VIA doesn't drop the ball. They seem to have a better opportunity to be competitive than they've had in a long time.

The frustrating thing with the Atoms is the chipset it uses. The 945 chipset is a pig in power usage. The way to beat the atom is to not only get the wattage of the CPU down, but the entire system power down. Scale down the chipset at the same time.

The headline is misleading in the sense that it makes it seem as if AMD is calling it the atom killer. I've seen many articles where people start bashing a company over the way an articles title was worded.

"Atom Killer"? Really? That's what you went with?

Atom invented the segment and is consuming it like a black hole consumes planets full of wheezy bloggers.

Anything AMD can get from panic to fab to etailer in just a few months isn't going to impress Atom, much less bring about its demise.

Yea....can't hardly wait for Geode II

Edit:

Ok, my poem not good.

That's because the goal isn't performance, it's battery life. Once they get the northbridge onto the Atom die rather than using a separate 65nm device it'll be in smartphones.

The Nano and whatever AMD come up with will be fully fledged OoOE processors, much more powerhungry and better suited for 'netbooks'. They go for different markets, there's just a little overlap.