New chip allows fanless designs and is compatible with new M690T chipset.

It’s the dream of every home theatre PC owner to build a quiet fan-less system but while the new Sempron 2100+ won’t provide the horsepower for Windows-based PCs, it is expected to gain acceptance in embedded industrial applications.

The new chip also utilises AMD’s S1 processor socket, designed to offer high reliability in rugged applications. It’s also compatible with the recently announced M690T chipset and is designed for single-board computing applications. The chip incorporates AMD64 64-bit technology, allowing vendors to incorporate high performance features into smaller industrial devices.

Also part of its announcement was the next-generation Geode LX 800 @ 0.9W processor. This embedded applications processor aimed at the telecommunications sector consumes just 1.8-watts of power and runs with a 500MHz clock speed however this new chip can handle extreme temperatures ranging from -40 to 85-degrees C.

The Geode processor was originally produced by National Semiconductor in 1999 and was built around the old Cyrix MediaGX core that National Semiconductor picked up when it merged with Cyrix in 1997. AMD bought the Geode processor group from National Semiconductor in 2003 to augment its embedded processor business.

The Geode LX is currently the chip being used in the One Laptop Per Child project started by MIT Media Labs and promoted by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan.