AMD A-Series Fusion APU arriving to laptops this quarter
AMD has announced through its official blog that production of its 32nm quad-core “Llano” A-Series APU has begun and should appear in laptops before the end of this quarter.
The A-Series of Fusion chips should be offering great performance-per-watt as demonstrated by the Youtube video below where a quad-core Llano APU is put up against an Intel Core i7-2630QM processor through various tests with impressive results. The new series includes Radeon HD 6000-class “BeaverCreek” graphics and support up to 4MB of cache with multi-GPU graphics support, according to Xbitlabs. This should allow for much better performance than the already released E-Series and C-Series of Fusion chips.
The AMD Fusion processors are the result of the merger between AMD and Radeon a few years back, and are thus system on chips (SoC) with integrated CPU and GPU architecture for improved energy consumption and efficiency. The earlier E-Series and C-Series have been available for low-cost laptops and netbooks, but the A-Series should be making its way to mainstream laptops and desktops.
Laptops sporting the new A-Series APU will start at $499, according to PCWorld. Hopefully, specific models and dates will be announced soon within the coming months.
| AMD A-Series Accelerated Processing Units Due in 2011 | |||||||||||
| Model | A8- 3560P | A8- 3550P | A8- 3560 | A8- 3550 | A6- 3460P | A6- 3450P | A6- 3460 | A6- 3450 | A4- 3360 | A4- 3350 | E2- 3250 |
| Cores | Husky | Husky | Husky | Husky | Husky | Husky | Husky | Husky | Husky | Husky | Husky |
| Core Count | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Stream Core Count | 400 | 400 | 400 | 400 | 320 | 320 | 320 | 320 | 160 | 160 | 160 |
| Clock-Speed | TBD | TBD | TBD | TBD | TBD | TBD | TBD | TBD | TBD | TBD | TBD |
| GPU Clock-Speed | TBD | 594 MHz | TBD | 594 MHz | TBD | 443 MHz | TBD | 443 | TBD | 594 MHz | 443 MHz |
| Radeon Brand | HD 6550 | HD 6550 | HD 6550 | HD 6550 | HD 6530 | HD 6530 | HD 6530 | HD 6530 | HD 6410 | HD 6410 | HD 6370 |
| Cache | 4MB | 4MB | 4MB | 4MB | 4MB | 4MB | 4MB | 4MB | 2MB | 2MB | 1MB |
| Memory | DDR3, 1866 MHz | DDR3, 1866 MHz | DDR3, 1866 MHz | DDR3, 1866 MHz | DDR3, 1866 MHz | DDR3, 1866 MHz | DDR3, 1866 MHz | DDR3, 1866 MHz | DDR3, 1866 MHz | DDR3, 1866 MHz | DDR3, 1600 MHz |
| Process Technology | 32nm | 32nm | 32nm | 32nm | 32nm | 32nm | 32nm | 32nm | 32nm | 32nm | 32nm |
| TDP | 100W | 100W | 65W | 65W | 100W | 100W | 65W | 65W | 65W | 65W | 65W |
| Turbo Core | TBD | TBD | TBD | TBD | TBD | TBD | TBD | TBD | TBD | TBD | TBD |
| Packaging | FM1 | FM1 | FM1 | FM1 | FM1 | FM1 | FM1 | FM1 | FM1 | FM1 | FM1 |
| Launch | Q4 2011 | Q3 2011 | Q4 2011 | Q3 2011 | Q4 2011 | Q3 2011 | Q4 2011 | Q3 2011 | Q4 2011 | Q3 2011 | Q3 2011 |
Table above from Xbitlabs
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