Earlier this week, Advanced Micro Devices introduced the Mobile Athlon 4, a slightly upgraded and lower power version of the popular desktop Athlon. With the introduction, AMD hopes to penetrate deeper into the mobile market, which is, at this point, completely dominated by Intel as AMD's only other mobile offerings are based on the K6 series, and are severely antiquated.

However, Intel isn't about to give up without a fight. Yahoo! News/ZDNet has reported that Intel will launch five new mobile Pentium 3 processors based on the new Tualatin core.

The fastest new mobile Pentium IIIs will compete with AMD's Athlon 4 chip--announced Monday--a mobile version of the Athlon that runs at speeds as high as 1GHz.

The five Tualatin chips will run at clock speeds of 866MHz, 933MHz, 1GHz, 1.06GHz and 1.13GHz.

Current mobile Pentium 3 processors are based on the Coppermine core, which uses a 0.18um process, and available at up to 1.0GHz. Tualatin is essentially Coppermine on a 0.13um process. Not only will the 0.13um process allow Intel to produce more chips for less, it will greatly reduce processor power consumption as well.

Unfortunately for Intel, while AMD's Athlon 4 will be available imminently, we likely won't see Tualatin processors for some time, some are predicting a June/July timeframe. This will afford AMD some time to get a foot in the door, at the very least.

Conversely, when Tualatin does become available, AMD may again find the door closing. Tualatin's 0.13um process will allow it to run extremely cool, and with extremely low power consumption. These have been two of the biggest questions surrounding the mobile Athlon 4. Even the enhanced Athlon 4 dissipates more power than the Coppermine Pentium 3, so the Tualatin will run incredibly cool compared to the Athlon 4. It is entirely possible that a 1GHz Tualatin will dissipate in the vicinity of 15 Watts at full load! Nevertheless, it's good to see competition heating up in the mobile segment as well.

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