The low-power APU/SoC has a TDP of 3W average, 6W maximum

Jul 30, 2013 12:44 GMT  ·  By

AMD's G-Series accelerated processing unit (though it qualifies as an SoC easily enough) would probably be a good fit for tablets and smartphones, if the ARM architecture didn't already have those segments well in hand.

That's why the Sunnyvale, California-based company isn't that concerned with the lack of design wins in those market segments.

Instead, it is shipping the G-Series to customers from the embedded industry, like the fields of digital signage, medical imaging, thin clients, industrial controls and automation, digital gaming, and communications infrastructure.

Advanced Micro Devices has just released the GX-210JA APU, which has a full System-on-Chip (SoC) design that needs a third less energy than the previous low-power G-Series unit.

The maximum TDP is said to be of 6W, but on average, only 3W are consumed. Many fanless designs are made possible because of this.

"The advance of APU processor design, the Surround Computing era, and The Internet of Things has created the demand for embedded devices that are low power but also offer excellent compute and graphics performance," said Arun Iyengar, vice president and general manager, AMD Embedded Systems.

"AMD Embedded G-Series SOC products offer unparalleled compute, graphics and I/O integration, resulting in fewer board components, low-power use, and reduced complexity and overhead cost. The new GX-210JA operates at an average of approximately 3 watts, enabling a new generation of fanless designs for content-rich, multimedia and traditional workload processing."

The AMD GX-210JA boasts an industrial temperature range of -40°C to +85°C and has two CPU cores.

It also uses a discrete-class AMD Radeon GPU, an integrated I/O controller, and Enterprise-class Error-Correction Code (ECC) memory support.

Here's the exact spec list for whoever wants to see it: GX-210JA SOC with AMD Radeon HD 8180 Graphics, dual-core, 6 W TDP, CPU frequency of 1.0 GHz, and GPU frequency of 225 MHz.