Five years ago: K6 could fit notebook picture

First published 4 April, 1997.

AMD's K6 processor could be sitting proud in notebooks this year if a big player wishes to incorporate the part. That would insult to injury for Intel which doesn't expect to have a Pentium Pro-class chip in notebooks until next year at earliest.

"We have the right size die and engineering capability to make [K6] notebook products but we haven't made a decision as to whether we'll make them," said Richard Baker, regional marketing manager for PC products at the chip maker. "If we can sell our current capacity, why should we? However, if we got one of the top five [PC vendors] sufficiently interested we'd do it."

As with desktop PCs, for AMD to succeed with a top name in notebooks it may have to battle against inertia and fear of Intel's power. "As a company we're pretty firmly in the Intel camp," said Chris Miller, product manager for notebooks at Toshiba. "They're delivering what we want and we work very closely with them."

IBM and Compaq have closer links with AMD. An IBM said that if Big Blue were to implement the K6 it would not be until late this year. Compaq was unavailable for comment.