AMD’s Brazos platform is based on the Zacate dual-core CPU and AMD has very high expectations from this new architecture. Zacate requires only passive cooling and it can easily slide into the increasingly popular micro ITX form factor.

We saw that Power Color and Sapphire already have systems and boards based on Brazos, but both of these companies want to price their small systems at $119 and up. This is the FOB price in Taiwan and you need to add local taxes, shipping expenses and some profit margin for distribution and etail / retail sales.

Since you can buy a decent notebook for around $300, the price has to go down, but in order to match desired $99, AMD partners will have to shave off some features like USB 3.0 and other fancy things.

Since Brazos can run fanless, we could see many home theater lovers getting such rigs as they are just nothing short of ideal for the role. Also, you can even play some games on Brazos’ Radeon HD 6310 graphics, which are part of the APU.

Brazos is a truly interesting little platform and we believe numerous nettop vendors will embrace it as soon as they can.