Turion X2 Ultra is the first processor family from AMD solely for the mobile platform, based on the Athlon 64 architecture with some specific architectural enhancements similar to current Phenom processors aimed at lower power consumption and longer battery life. The Turion Ultra processor was released as part of the Puma mobile platform in June 2008.
The Turion X2 Ultra is a dual-core processor to be fabricated on 65 NM technology using 300 mm SOI wafers. It will support DDR2-800 SO-Dim Ms and features a DRAM preference to improve performance and a mobile-enhanced north bridge. Each processor core comes with 1 MiB L2 cache for a total of 2 MiB L2 cache for the entire processor. This is double the L2 cache found on the current Turion 64 X2 processor. Clock rates range from 2.0 GHz to 2.4 GHz, and thermal design power will range from 32 watts to 35 watts.
The Turion X2 Ultra processor, unlike earlier Turion, implements three voltage planes: one for the north bridge and one for each core. This, along with multiple phase-locked loops, allows one core to alter its voltage and operating frequency independently of the other core, and independently of the North Bridge. Indeed, in a matter of microseconds, the processor can switch to one of 8 frequency levels and one of 5 voltage levels. By adjusting frequency and voltage during use, the processor can adapt to different workloads and help reduce power consumption. It can operate as low as 250 MHz to conserve power during light use.
Additionally, the processor features deep sleep state C3, deeper sleep state C4, and Hyper Transport 3.0 up to 2.6 GHz, or up to 41.6 GB/s bandwidth per link at 16-bit link width and dynamic scaling of HT link width down to 0-bit in both directions from and to the chipset for four different usage scenarios. It also implements multiple on-die thermal sensors through integrated SMBUS interface with additional MEMHOT signal sent from embedded controller to the processor, and reduces memory temperature.
The Turion X2 Ultra processor uses the same socket S1 as its predecessor, Turion 64 X2, but the pin out is different. It is designed to work with the RS780M chip set.
Given the above enhancements on the architecture, the cores were minimally modified and are based on the K8 instead of the K10 micro architecture. AMD Fellow Maurice Stein man has said the cores are almost transistor-for-transistor identical to those found in the 65 NM Turion 64 X2 processors.
