14 DAY TRIAL // AMD's Fusion architecture has been delayed repeatedly, for various reasons, and while the first APUs will finally come out in 2011, the llano appears to have again run into some issues that prompted its maker to move its launch to the second half of 2011.
As end-users may or may not know, the AMD Fusion technology is one which puts the CPU and DirectX 11 GPU on the same die.
The Llano accelerated processing unit (APU) will be part of the Sabine platform and some of its specifications have already been revealed by previous reports.
It will be a quad-core chip with a little over 35 million transistors (without L2 cache), with each core having a target clock speed of 3.0 GHz and power consumption of 2.5W – 25W.
This leads to a variety of possible Llano processors, with power draw of 20W to 59W, even versions with less than four cores.
There will even be mainstream APUs of 2 to 4 cores limited to a TDP of 30W, as well as low-power two-core versions with a thermal envelope of 20W.
AMD has previously said that shipments of the first llano models will commence sometime during the first half of 2010.
Now, however, those plans are implied to have been modified following certain issues with the yields of the first Llano samples.
According to so-called sources familiar with AMD's plans, the availability was delayed a couple of months, now slated for July of 2011.
As part of the Sabine Platform, Llano will be complemented by the Hudson I/O controllers which will provide support for PCI Express graphics, 16 USB ports, six SATA ports, integrated video DAC, 1 Gb Ethernet and even USB 3.0 on the Hudson M3.
Meanwhile, the Bulldozer high-end processors are still intended to make their appearance in the early days of Q2, 2011.