It's meant for security and is an addition to the two/four PUMA x86 processing cores

Apr 29, 2014 07:30 GMT  ·  By

Advanced Micro Devices has at last finalized and presented its latest low-power accelerated processing units, which were called Beema and Mullins, but which will now take their places in the A and E chip series.

The Mainstream and Low-Power mobile APUs, as AMD calls them, really qualify more as SoCs (system on chip devices) than CPUs/APUs.

That was the entire point though: to integrate as many features as possible, so that tablets, 2-in-1 devices and other ultraportables may be even thinner and lighter than before.

According to what the company said in its conference call earlier this month, there already are such products, even PCs, based on Mullins and Beema set to arrive in the coming months. Lenovo and Samsung were mentioned, among others.

AMD has brought together its reference designs in the Discovery Platform. There is a tablet with desk and gaming controller docks, as well as an ultrathin desktop PC that is as small as a smartphone.

Clearly, the Sunnyvale, California-based company is walking outside the normal beaten path. Whether this will bring success or not remains to be seen.

There are a number of unique and impressive assets that the Mainstream Low-Power APUs bring to the table, and most of them we'll check out separately.

For now, we'll take a look at the most important, or at least the only one that deserves to be called one of a kind: the AMD TrustZone technology.

It's a security technology that uses an ARM Cortex A5 processor (that's right, an ARM core) to split each processor into two virtual CPUs.

One of them works normally, handling things like office document work and games, while the other does the online banking, digital payments, antivirus operations, etc. It's fully encrypted and provides a layer of security never before seen. Intel itself has nothing like this.

AMD TrustZone technology
AMD TrustZone technology
We may go so far as to say that AMD could steal quite a few corporate customers because of TrustZone, maybe render people less skittish about using gadgets at work, since trade secrets won't be in such danger anymore. The chip won’t even boot without the permissions of the TrustZone chip (the Cortex A5 has its own ROM and SRAM, you see, but can still access system memory and everything else).
AMD Cortex A5 security processor
AMD Cortex A5 security processor
As for actual performance, we're looking at a 20% power advantage, up to 50% graphics performance gains, and a sevenfold increase in compute performance compared to Intel Haswell U Pentium chips (those PUMA cores must be something). Computing-wise, though, performance is "only" three times better than Intel Atom.

For those who want the exact specifications, here they are, starting with the Mainsteam mobile Accelerated Processing Units.

There will be four, two dual-core (1.35 GHz E1-6010 at 10W and 1.5 GHz E2-6110 at 15W) and two quad-core models (1.8 GHz A4-6210 at 15W and 2.4 GHz A6-6310 also at 15W). They even have better graphics than Intel Core i3 CPUs.

AMD Beema Mainstream APU specs
AMD Beema Mainstream APU specs
The Low-Power Mobile APUs will be three in number: the dual-core E1 Micro-6200T (3.95W TDP, 1.4 GHz clock), the quad-core A4 Micro-6400T (4.5W TDP and 1.6 GHz clock) and, again, a quad-core, the A10 Micro-6700T (2.2 GHz, 4.5W TDP).
AMD Mullins Low-Power APU specs
AMD Mullins Low-Power APU specs
Stick around as we explore the other assets of the new APUs/SoCs, most notably the Intelligent Boost dynamic overclocking technology.

AMD Beema and Mullins features (14 Images)

AMD launches Beema and Mullins APUs
AMD launches Beema and Mullins APUsNew APU functional view
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