AMD's Athlon Neo platform, codenamed Yukon, for ultrathin notebooks will be launched with HP's new Pavilion dv2 notebook. The Athlon Neo is based on microarchitecture similar to AMD's Athlon and Opteron chips.

The Athlon Neo platform has a Neo processor, ATI Radeon X1250 integrated graphics, and an optional ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3410 graphics card for an HD experience on ultrathin notebooks. The platform's processor is listed as single-core Neo MV-40 clocked at 1.6GHz; it has a 512K cache and supports 32-bit as well as 64-bit operating systems, which is impressive. With a Thermal Design Power rating of 15W, AMD claims that the platform is power efficient.

The Athlon Neo platform's chipset supports HDMI and DVI. Hence, the optional Mobility Radeon HD 3410 graphics card supporting 64 DDR2 memory on the platform will allow playback of 1080p video and also powergaming, but an optional graphics card might reduce battery life. Therefore, AMD is depending on PowerNow technology to switch the core voltage and operating frequency of the processor as required.

In the second half of 2009, AMD will roll out the successor to Yukon, which is dubbed the Congo. It will feature a dual core processor. With just this product, it's too early to say whether AMD's Athlon Neo will beat Intel's Atom if OEMs use the Athlon Neo for netbooks. AMD has smartly positioned the Athlon Neo for slim form factor notebooks.