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AMD’s ATI division on Wednesday announced a new external graphics solution, known as XGP, that will allow discrete graphics modules mounted in an external chassis to be connected to laptop computers.

ATI’s XGP is fully optimized for the new AMD Turion X2 Ultra notebook platforms, also announced on Wednesday. ATI also announced the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3800 graphics chip. Finally, the company disclosed its new ATI PowerXpress feature, which basically is a version of its Hybrid Graphics technology for notebook PCs.

The XGP feature is being launched in conjunction with the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3800, AMD said. Fujitsu announced support for the technology.

All told, the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3800 series coupled with the AMD Turion X2 Ultra processors, the AMD 7-Series chipset, and 802.11n technology make up the “Puma” platform, also announced on Wednesday.

The external graphics concept was first demonstrated as part of the Asus XG Station at the 2007 CES show. A month later, the PCI Express SIG released an external cabling specification that was designed to allow for external graphics solutions, both for desktops as well as notebooks.

“If you wanted to build a gaming machine with two or three or some ridiculous number of graphics cards, there would be a restriction by the chassis [in terms of the number of slots],” Ramin Neshati, chair of the PCI Express Technical Communication Working Group and a technology manager at Intel, said then. “In the future, you could remove those graphics cards and place them in a separate block.”

AMD demonstrated XGP using four displays, with HDMI and integrated audio available to all four.

The cable was co-designed by AMD and Japan Aviation Electronics Industry, a PCI Express connector manufacturer. It provides 4 Gbits/s bandwidth; in a novel twist, the cable also serves as a USB connection to allow the external solution to serve as an external hub. Executives described the technology as an ideal way to take a notebook to a business meeting, then return home and use the external graphics solution to play games.

Fujitsu announced plans to manufacture or at least offer one of the XGP solutions. “Powered by ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870 in an external AMILO GraphicsBooster, the ultra mobile AMILO Sa 3650, with ATI XPG technology, takes on two very different but equally compelling personalities,” said Björn Fehrm, head of strategy and innovation for the consumer business at Fujitsu-Siemens Corp.’s EMEA division.”Use it for your daily computing with the internal graphics for outstanding mobility and battery life. Dock it to your AMILO GraphicsBooster when coming home, in a hotel room or at a LAN event and now your gaming and multimedia performance is in another world.”

The Mobility Radeon HD 3800, meanwhile, offers three times the performance of the previous generation, AMD claimed. The chip is manufactured in a 55-nm process and uses a 256-bit GDDR-3 memory interface.

PowerXpress, meanwhile, is a means to let owners of the slightly older Radeon HD 3400 series graphics chips gain a boost in performance. By combining the HD 3400 and an integrated AMD M780G with ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics and plugging in the system into the way, the PowerXpress technology is triggered, allowing the two to work together to divvy up the rendering tasks.