AMD Demonstrating Fusion APU at IFA 2010

John Taylor AMD’s director of Fusion Marketing, attending the 2010 IFA Consumer Electronics show in Berlin, says the company is demonstrating the low power AMD Fusion APU in systems that are expected to ship in Q1 2011. Here is the gist of the blog post:

Before we talk power, let’s remember the basics of what AMD is packing into this mighty little package:

• Dual low-power CPU cores codenamed "Bobcat", providing mainstream CPU performance in less than one-half the die area and a fraction of the power.
• DirectX11-capable GPU cores derived from the award-winning AMD Radeon™ discrete GPU. This is the GPU technology on which AMD built its position as the world leader and #1 market share for discrete GPUs.
• A new Unified Video Decoder (UVD) on-die in the APU.

AMD plans to ramp production here in 2010, with systems available in early 2011. So here at IFA 2010, we’re both demonstrating the capabilities of low-power AMD Fusion APUs, and providing a little more information on the individual products. "Brazos" is the codename for the notebook, netbook and desktop platforms that will be built from the APU. But the APU itself comes in two flavors based on performance and (low) power draw:

• An 18-watt TDP APU codenamed "Zacate" for ultrathin, mainstream, and value notebooks as well as desktops and all-in-ones.
• And a 9-watt APU codenamed "Ontario" for netbooks and small form factor desktops and devices.

Both low-power APU versions feature two "Bobcat" x86 cores and fully support DirectX11, DirectCompute (Microsoft programming interface for GPU computing) and OpenCL (cross-platform programming interface standard for multi-core x86 and accelerated GPU computing). Both also include UVD dedicated hardware acceleration for HD video including 1080p resolutions.

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