14 DAY TRIAL // The 2013 edition of the AMD Developer Summit took place between November 11 and 13, and was called APU13. There, the company launched, as we've just found out, the Mullins and Beema accelerated processing units.
Well, “launched” is kind of a strong word, because the company hasn't made them available to makers of mobile PCs and tablets.
In fact, Advanced Micro Devices didn't say when shipments will start either. Since they will be the main force on AMD's mobile front in 2014, availability can come at any point in the first or second quarters.
Anyway, while it did not say when we can expect the chips to arrive, AMD did detail them, and they do seem promising.
Mullins is the platform that intends to challenge Intel's Bay Trail-T and ARM processors on the tablet market.
It will have 2 to 4 Puma cores, a security processor and a number of GCN (GraphicsCore Next) stream processors.
That means that there won't exactly be a GPU included, more like the CPU and graphics cores will be part of the same whole, as HSA dictates (Heterogeneous System Architecture).
The power draw of Mullins is supposed to be 2W. We don't know how good the APU will be though, only that it will be “very competitive” compared to Intel's Bay Trail-T.
We'd have been more excited if AMD had made the comparison to ARM SoCs, but maybe that's a bit too much to hope for right now.
Anyway, that's enough about the ultra-low power tablet unit. We still have to check out the Beema low-power chip for ultrathin laptops.
Also featuring 2 or 4 CPU cores and some GCN graphics units, plus an AMD security processor, Beema is an “evolution” of the Jaguar architecture with 10-25W TDP (thermal design power).
The security processor on both APUs is an ARM Crotex A5 whose purpose is to divide the APU into two virtual CPUs firewalled from each other. It is called Trust Zone and will be useful in execution environments where security is essential.
