AMD has revealed that its low power CPU is codenamed Bobcat and this is the CPU core that will be the part of 2011 notebook APU codename “Brazos”.

The company also said that Bobcat is a very low power design with a sub-1W capable power envelope that can score 90 percent of today’s mainstream performance in less than half silicon area.

It is also easy to reuse and what AMD didn’t tell you is that this CPU will be developed in 40nm bulk process as it will get DirectX 11 RV8x0 series 40nm graphics inside, as this is the point of APU to have CPU and GPU together. AMD claims SSE 1 to 3 and virtualisation which is nothing spectacular but it's still good to hear.

With the Bobcat, AMD plans to compete with Intel's Atom. However, by the time Bobcat launches, Atom will be three years old and some market reports see 130+ million Atoms / Netbooks in the market. AMD has to pull miracle to get OEMs and ODMs interested in its design.

AMD goes ARM like strategy where it plans to manufacture CPU on Bulk, even though it used Silicon on insulator for years now.

Let’s not forget that this interesting core is scheduled for some point in 2011, and when a company tells you a year it's highly likely that production and availability should occur later in the year rather than in January time.

The big issue is what Intel plans for its 2011 Atom successor.