AMD launches Fusion APU with integrated DX11 GPU

AMD has officially launched the new family of mobile processors – Fusion APU. The company has chosen to use the name APU to separate the new circuits from regular CPUs since it has made room for a competent graphics circuit on the same silicon. Fusion APU brings DirectX 11 support and focus on multimedia and energy efficient platforms.

Ontario and Zacate are the names of the two processor series AMD has launched and in total we see four Fusion APU circuits. What keeps the two series apart is the power consumption, while within the series the number of cores and clock frequencies vary.

Application Processing Unit speaks for how AMD has worked during the development of the new processor family. The focus is on broad functionality and just like Intel did with Sandy Bridge the Fusion family brings broad functionality built into the processor circuit.

AMD focuses primarily on the mobile market and its 40 nm Fusion APU circuits will be ready for systems from more or less all major system builders. Zacate is intended to fit with regular notebooks with better performance but also higher power consumption. With a TDP of 18 watt it is on par with Intel’s popular Consumer Ultra Low Voltage Core 2 processors.

Ontario consumes half of that and goes up against Intel’s Atom processors and is expected to end up in netbooks, but also ultrathin notebooks. AMD operates by the lead words HD and day-long battery times. The integrated graphics circuit will sport 80 stream processors and be capable of handling high definition video formats and play games.

The new Bobcat architecture comes with one or two cores depending on model and its energy efficient architecture will according to AMD offer both good performance and long battery times. It specifies 10 hours or more, which depends on component choice and optimizations.

AMD’s new Fusion APU circuit also supports UVD3 – AMD’s new media processor. Thanks to several AMD partners Fusion APU circuits will become an interesting alternative for desktops with integrated motherboards in tiny formats.

AMD Fusion A series will complete the family in the first half of 2011. The code name for these processors is Llano and will be a more powerful id-range APU with up to four Phenom II CPU cores and a built-in DirectX 11 GPU with both more and higher clocked stream processors. The Fusion A series will be made with 32nm technology and be matched by the coming Socket AM3+ platform.