14 DAY TRIAL // Advanced Micro Devices delayed the introduction of its Fusion accelerated processing units (APUs) in the past, but it seems that the current ETA set by the Sunnyvale, California-based company is going to be met. Until recently, however, details on the actual capabilities of the processors have been scarce, but AMD took advantage of its participation at the Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco to shed some light on the technology. The company reportedly spoke of the Llano APU, a processor that will be the first Fusion chip to be released in 2011.
The Llano is expected to debut next year as part of the “Lynx” mainstream desktop platform and the “Sabine” notebook platform. It will be built on the 32nm manufacturing process and will have four x86 cores, as well as an integrated graphics processing unit with DirectX 11 capabilities. The chip will also integrate a DDR3 memory controller. In addition, the Llano's clock speeds are expected to surpass the 3GHz threshold and the L2 cache is set to be of 4MB (1MB per core). The processor will lack L3 cache memory.
AMD also took the time to reveal the power-consumption details. The APU will operate on a voltage of 0.8V to 1.3V and will have a maximum TDP of 25W. As for the minimum TDP, the Llano will be able to survive on as little as 2.5W. This will be possible through a power-gating technology that will be able to shut down unused cores. This procedure will be complemented by a Digital APM module and will significantly lower the power consumption while also reducing leakage.
If AMD delivers on these promises, the Llano chip will already have an edge over Intel's CPUs with integrated graphics, namely DirectX 11 support. The chips will also supposedly use a “power aware clock grid design.” Unfortunately, the company refused to delve too deeply into this feature, saying only that it would allow a clock-switching power reduction of about two times. This might turn out quite useful, considering that even the mere distribution of the clock to all parts of a modern microprocessor eats up a fair amount of energy.
The best news for AMD loyalists will most likely be AMD's plan to start shipping samples of the Llano during the first half of the current year, instead of the second half of 2010, as it was initially intended. The official release of the APU, however, is still set for the first half of 2011.