AMD introduced Tuesday its A-series apus, known under the name of Llano. The hybrid cpu and gpu chips to bring Fusion to the mainstream and must be the subject of other gaming to cheap notebooks.
The A-series of the Lynx platform is after the Brazos-line for netbooks the second series of apus from AMD. The first A-models for mainstream desktops, all-in-ones and notebooks, and consist of dualcores and quadcores. Llano will be manufactured on 32nm and has a size of 228 square millimeters. There appear copies with tdp’s of 35 and 45W.
AMD ranks Llano in three series: A8, A6 and A4. The A8-quadcores with gpu with 400 cores to compete with Intel’s Core i7 and Core i5 chips, around a price level of $ 700. The A6-quadcores have the 320 gpu-cores do. They will be in notebooks of $ 600, end up and also the competition with Core i3’s conclusion. The A4 models, finally, are dualcores with Radeon gpu’s with 240 cores, which in laptops around the $ 500 will come.
The cpu-part of the first batch consists of four 32nm produced Stars cores, which, with few optimizations after little different from the cores of the 45nm fried Athlon II and Phenom II chips. The cores can each with 1MB L2 cache. New cores based on the Bulldozer architecture come only next year, at the launch of the Trinity apus, Llano follow-up.
The gpu part of the A-series is also manufactured in 32nm and the architecture is based on that of the Radeon HD 5570, or the Redwood gpu. The chipdeel consists of five simd arrays, each with 80 cores for a total of 400. The dualcores are also combined with 240 gpu-cores.
The cpu and the gpu, 128bit memory bus sharing, where the users takes priority if both chips compete for access. Notebooks would be the memory speed in combination with ddr3-1600 memory at 25.6 GB/s, while desktops with ddr3-1866 memory and a memory bandwidth of 29.8 GB/s. Llano has two dedicated beeldscherminterfaces with 4 lanes, where use can be made of two lanes of the total of sixteen of the pci-e 2.0 interface.
AMD combines the Llano-apu-for Lynx platform with the Fusion Controller Hub i/o chip, two different versions appear: the A70M and A60M. The biggest difference between these two is that the A70M usb 3.0 support. Both controllerchips support in addition to sata-600.
AMD puts the emphasis on the battery life of the apu’s. Compared to the AMD Danube platform last year would Target the 3.5 hours longer to go through, depending on the model and the scenario. The savings should, among others, by the use of power gating. Here are parts of the chip turned off completely when not in use. Another part that AMD for showcasing is Turbo Core, for higher coresnelheden, depending on the workload. Also brings AMD Dual Graphics. Just like when Hybrid Crossfire should combine the igp with a dedicated gpu performance benefit yield.
From the first tests of a Llano notebook from Compal, a high-end A8-3500M and A70M-Fusion Controller Hub, turns out according to Anandtech AMD a good catching up and for little money notebooks and makes it possible that users can play games with average settings. Cpu area to the apu’s, of course, pass against Sandy Bridge, something which is probably not soon going to change, so the gpgpu-development is of great importance for AMD.
ModelGpuTdpCpu
coresCpu
klokspeedL2Gpu
coresGpu
klokspeedDdr3
A8-3530MX
HD 6620G
45W
4
1.9 GHz/2.6 GHz
4MB
400
444MHz
ddr3-1600/
ddr3L-1333
A8-3510MX
HD 6620G
45W
4
1.8 GHz/2.5 GHz
4MB
400
444MHz
ddr3-1600/
ddr3L-1333
A8-3500M
HD 6620G
35W
4
1.5 GHz/2.4 GHz
4MB
400
444MHz
ddr3-1600/
ddr3L-1333
A6-3410MX
HD 6520G
45W
4
1.6 GHz/2.3 GHz
4MB
320
400MHz
ddr3-1600/
ddr3L-1333
A6-3400M
HD 6520G
35W
4
1.4 GHz/2.3 GHz
4MB
320
400MHz
ddr3-1600/
ddr3L-1333
A4-3310MX
HD 6480G
45W
2
2.1 GHz/2.5 GHz
2MB
240
444MHz
ddr3-1600/
ddr3L-1333
A4-3300M
HD 6480G
35W
2
1.9 GHz/2.5 GHz
2MB
240
444MHz
ddr3-1600/
ddr3L-1333