14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday, we brought you news about the Kaveri A- and FX-Series accelerated processing units, mobile APUs with up to 12 Cores. Now, we get to check out the chips made for business rather than consumer PCs.
In truth, there isn't such a big, conceptual difference between the processors of business computers, and the ones used by normal customers.
It's just that, since business PCs are expected to mostly be used for office work, document editing, schedules and presentations, they don't need the same graphics capabilities, or even computing capabilities, as, say, gaming notebooks.
By that logic, the new Kaveri A- and FX-Series chips are overkill for them. That's why AMD has introduced the PRO A-Series APUs.
There are three chips, all of them geared towards energy efficiency while still retaining the assets that AMD APUs are known for: a higher-than-usual core count, and better graphics than Intel alternatives.
Although, granted, the core count is rather misleading, since, at the end of the day, the AMD PRO A-Series chips are still dual-core and quad-core processors.
It's just that, in addition to those x86 cores, there are GPU Compute modules which also count as “cores” in AMD's book.
It's a byproduct of the HSA technology, which permits the CPU and GPU cores to neatly divide tasks between themselves at hardware level, instead of going through the OS.
It essentially allows the CPU and GPU cores equal access to the system memory, instead of needing the CPU to go through the OS and assign tasks to the GPU.
This significantly increases the performance of the system, since GPUs aren't just good for drawing textures. They also have high parallel computing capabilities.
There are three AMD PRO A-Series chips in the new product collection: A10 PRO-7350B, A8 PRO-7150B, and A6 PRO-7050B.
The A10 PRO-7350B is a 10-core unit (quad-core, 6 GPU modules) with 2.1 GHz / 3.3 GHz clock, 553 Max GPU frequency (Radeon R6 Graphics), 4 MB L2 cache memory, and 19W TDP (thermal design power).
The A8 PRO-7150B is similar, but runs at 1.9 GHz / 3.2 GHz and has Radeon R5 graphics, not R4.
Finally, the A6 PRO-7050B is a 5-core unit (dual-core + 3 GPU modules) with 17W TDP, 533 MHz GPU speed (Radeon R4 graphics), and 1 MB L2 cache memory.
All three AMD PRO A-Series accelerated processing units boast DDR3-1600 memory controllers, one PCI Express 2.0 x8 lane, and DirectX 11.2 support, plus UVD 4.2. Only some HP Elite 700-Series notebooks offer them, for now.