The notebook market has experienced explosive growth over the last 18 months. Thanks to the crowded arrival of the Netbook and a new focus on mobile lifestyles, this once-boring segment has become a lifeline in a time of devastating economic loss. While Intel plans to charge ahead with a new generation of the Atom, AMD has shunned the Netbook and created an entirely new class of sub-notebooks. As AMD looks to bolster the presence of their new form factor, we take a look at how they plan to get there.

Incubating a new market

After the firm hard-lined against Netbooks in November of last year, big green previewed its take on the thin’n'light at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. Their vision was a new class of notebooks — dubbed value Ultra Thins — that would satisfy user performance expectations at a price point slightly above the Netbook.

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Blogger Theo Valich is reporting that Intel’s Auburndale and Havendale GPCPUs, CPUs that contained both x86 and GPU silicon in a single package, have been canned on account of the economy.

These chips were both dual core units that connected to an internal GPU through a QPI link. These CPUs were originally pegged to debut at 45nm for both the notebook and desktop markets, but have instead been abandoned for the 32nm Arrandale in 1Q10.

But, this is not the end of Fusion concept in Santa Clara. Intel is going to replace Auburndale/Havendale with their 32nm die-shrink, known as Arrandale. Arrandale was originally supposed to debut for Back to School season 2010, alongside 32nm quad-core and sexa-core Westmere processors (Core i7 die-shrinks). But now, Arrandale core has been brought forward by six months to Q1′2010.

Given the technical complexity of a GPU-on-CPU design, it’s not altogether improbable that this is the case. A 32nm part would be less expensive, gives the firm more time to develop the design, and still offers more than a year’s time to beat AMD to the punch with their 2011 Fusion release.

Aside from RIM’s official unveiling of the Storm, not much is at play in the world of gadgets today. Nevertheless, here are a few links to get you started:

• Harnessing the power of frickin’ laser beams for 20Gbps terrestrial wireless? 10Gbps at 800m? Daddy like!
• Just in case you haven’t heard, Intel released the Core 2 Duo E7300 and E5200 some weeks back. While you probably wouldn’t want to court the E5200, the 7xxx series is rather a fantastic bargain.
• RIM’s BlackBerry Storm was officially unveiled. It supports quad-band GSM, EV-DO Rev. A, HSPA/UMTS, no WiFi, a weird clicky touchscreen, a wacky app store and some other bits and bobs. Give it a peek if you’re a smartphone afficianado.
• AMD will soon start pushing its GPU-on-CPU “Fusion” technology pretty hard. To prep the market for its coming, AMD is resorting to a bizarre and arguably useless utility to “prep your computer for gaming.” Seriously, it’s just weird.

As usual, check back to this post as news rolls in throughout the day.