AMD for its part is setting up for a staggered release. Palomino chips are leaving the factory now. PC makers are free to incorporate these into notebooks. Nonetheless, the official announcement of the chip won't come until at least one top-tier PC maker is ready to announce a product. At that point, AMD will make a joint announcement with that company and reveal all the details on the new chip, which is expected to debut at about 900MHz.
Analysts say that chipsets are slowing the big names down.
Chipsets, which perform the job of tying the chip in with the rest of the system, including graphics, memory and disk drives, are expected from Via Technologies and Acer. Both Via and Acer have chipsets that would work with Palomino. That chipset would offer an integrated graphics core from S3 Graphics and will likely be announced in April and shipped by the end of the second quarter. Acer's CyberMagik 1646 chipset, announced in mid-January, is scheduled to ship in the second quarter, a company spokeswoman said. It is likely that samples of both chipsets have been sent to PC makers or will be sent shortly.