14 DAY TRIAL // It has been rumored for quite some time now that AMD is working on developing a special version of its C-series APUs for tablet use, and the Sunnyvale-based company has just made these reports official with the introduction of the Z-series accelerated processing units.
Right now, the series is comprised of just a single member, the Z-01, but this has already started shipping and is expected to make its appearance in quite a few tablets designs in the not-so-distant future.
Form the information that is available until now, the Z-01 appears to be an optimized version of the AMD C-50 APU, as the chip features the same dual-core design based on a pair of Bobcat cores clocked at 1GHz.
Furthermore, the Z-01 also includes the same Radeon HD 6250 graphics core as the C-50, which is clocked at 276MHz.
However, the APU's TDP was lowered in order to make it better suited for tablet use, and the Z-01 requires 3.1W less than the C-50 to operate (5.9W in comparison with 9W).
As stated a bit earlier, AMD has already started shipping these chips to its hardware partners and the first tablet to use this processor is going to be the MSI Windpad 110W, which is on display right now at Computex.
In addition to the AMD APU, MSI's tablet features a 10-inch touch screen, is designed to run Windows 7 (the demo tablet was running Win7 Pro) and should hit retail for around $599.
Outside of Microsoft's Windows operating system, the AMD Z-01 chip is also optimized for running the x86 branch of Android.
AMD hasn't stated if it plans to launch other APU models in the Z-Series, and also hasn't disclosed the price of the Z-01 accelerated processing unit. (via AnandTech)
