14 DAY TRIAL // As AMD's Llano APU is getting closer to its release date, more and more information about the chip as well as about the chipsets it's going to use make their way onto the web, a recently released slide just detailing the desktop and notebook versions of the Hudson controller hub which is going to power the future FM1 motherboards.
As previously revealed, the notebooks version of the platform will be called Sabine, while the desktop version is dubbed Lynx.
Both of these, however, will carry a Gigabit Ethernet MAC (contrary to what previous leaks have told us), six 6Gbps SATA III ports, a wide number of PCI Express lanes as well as up to 4-channel HD audio.
RAID is also enabled, but high-end chipsets, like the desktop Hydson-D2 and Hudson-D3, will support more RAID modes than the notebook version of controller hub.
In addition, Hudson-M3 and Hudson-D3 also get four native SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports.
Compared to the Brazos platform, that is targeting entry-level computer users and ultra-portable laptops, Llano APUs uses a more advanced architecture which targets the mainstream and performance notebook sector.
On the desktop side, these new chips go after the market space occupied right now by the Athlon II CPUs as both processors are based on the Stars micro-architecture that AMD introduced with their Phenom CPU line.
However, unlike the Phenom of the Athlon II, Llano will carry an on-die graphics core, that is derived from the ATI Redwood-class GPUs (HD 5670), and features six SIMD engines, each with 80 stream processors.
Furthermore, Llano also integrates a dual-channel DDR3-1600 memory controller and 1MB L2 cache per core as well as an PCI Express 2.0 controller.
All Llano APUs will feature Turbo Core, core power gating as well as digital on-die temperature measurements, and are compatible with AMD's Socket FM1 motherboards. (via XtremeSystems)
