Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has put one of its accelerated processing units (APUs) through its paces at the company's Technical Forum and Exhibition in Taiwan.
The chip's code name is LLano and it joins the previously announced Ontario and Zacate processors in the APU series, all due for release next year.
As with all chips in this Fusion series, LLano incorporates a graphics processor on the same silicon as the central processing unit (CPU). The benefits of this is graphics data does not have to ride on a slow system bus for processing and its journey is extremely short. The combination also promises to reduce power requirements.
The showcase demonstration was designed to highlight different aspects of the chips performance. There were two calculations involving pi, or π, one being the calculation of this constant to 32 million decimal places.
To show off the graphics capabilities, Llano processed high definition (HD) video and was shown running Sega's Aliens vs Predator video game full-screen on a 1024x768 pixels display.
AMD Llano is based on 32 nm (nanometre) technology and has been designed for use in desktops and laptops. It packs on board four x86-compliant cores, a graphics processing unit (GPU) with support for DirectX 11, and the DDR3 memory controller.
The Fusion series will be pitched against Intel’s APU, code named Sandy Bridge, next year.
Intel has announced its move away from 32nm to 22nm with the commissioning of a new development factory and the conversion of four fabrication plants (fabs). These fabs will initially be used to manufacture the Sandy Bridge chip’s follow-up Ivy Bridge in a year’s time.
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