14 DAY TRIAL // Users that will be running Internet Explorer 9 and Windows 7 on top of devices powered by AMD Fusion family of Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) in 2011, will be able to take advantage of a number of capabilities, including full hardware-accelerated, Microsoft promised.
AMD Fusion APUs will be introduced this week at the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2011) in Las Vegas, bringing to the table a new chip concept, one that has both the CPU and GPU sit on a single die.
Essentially, a single APU brings together a multi-core CPU (x86) but also discrete-level graphics technology.
“The graphics side of the Fusion APU is powered with what AMD is calling the VISION Engine.
“The VISION Engine consists of DirectX 11 capable graphics capabilities, a UVD3 video acceleration block (like the one found in the new AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series GPUs) for native mpeg-4, mpeg-2, h264, DivX decoding, and parallel processing designed to help speed up application performance,” revealed Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc.
A range of devices powered by AMD Fusion APUs are expected to drop this year from Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo, MSI, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba, according to AMD.
The APU maker reveals that customers will be able to get desktops, notebooks, HD netbooks but also tablets, embedded designs and additional form factors sporting the new AMD Fusion technology.
Among the advantages of AMD Fusion APUs is long battery life, approximately 10 hours, thanks to the AMD’s AllDay Power feature.
“The 2011 low-power AMD Fusion APU platform (codenamed “Brazos”), designed for everyday computing for PCs like netbooks and other small form factor PCs, will come in 2 flavors: the E-Series and C-Series. These APUs come with AMD’s new x86 CPU core codenamed “Bobcat”.
“Later in 2011, the A-Series will hit designed for mainstream laptops and desktop PCs (codenamed “Llano”) which will have up to 4 x86 cores. At CES, AMD expects many of the major PC OEMs to announce PCs with AMD Fusion APUs,” LeBlanc added.
