AMD has just announced three new Mobile Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) lineup, which better performance and power efficiency. AMD’s APU brings the CPU and GPU on a single chip, and connects to an external chipset to handle peripherals.
Here are the three new families of processors from lower to higher performance:
- 2013 AMD Elite Mobility APU (codenamed “Temash”) – 28nm, dual and quad-core x86 APU designed for touch small form-factor notebooks (i.e. netbooks), tablets, and hybrids 13-inches and below; Performance between Intel Atom and Core i3. 3.9 to 8W TDP.
- The 2013 AMD Mainstream APU (codenamed “Kabini”) – Quad-core x86 SoC solution for entry-level and small-form factor touch notebooks; Performance equivalent to Intel Pentium and Core i3 depending on model. 9 to 25W TDP
- 2013 AMD Elite Performance APU (codenamed “Richland”) – For premium ultrathin notebooks. Equivalent to Intel Core i3 to Core i5, depending on model. 17 to 35W TDP
I’ll mainly focus on Elite Mobitity APU for tablets and netbook here, but if you want more information about Kabini and Richland, you can check out Liliputing article.
There are 3 Temash / Elite Mobility APUs: A6-1450, A4-1250 and A4-1200 as shown in the table below.
A4-1200 is likely to be used in entry-level tablets, A4-1250 in notebooks with screens smaller than 13.3″, and A6-1450 in a bit more powerful notebooks. Acer Aspire V5-122
is available for pre-order on Amazon with those 3 processors for prices ranging from $479.99 to $549.99.
These APUs combine “Jaguar” x86 CPU cores with Graphics Core Next AMD Radeon HD 8000 Series graphics. AMD claims up to 172 percent more CPU performance per watt and up to 212 percent better graphics performance per watt than its predecessor (AMD C-70 APU (9W) vs AMD A4-1200 APU (4W)), as well as up to 12 hours of resting battery life. The company also tested a system based on A6-1450, and found 45 percent longer battery life, and close to five times more GPU performance than a system based on Intel Core i3-3217U (Acer Iconia W700-6607), both systems running Windows 8.
The company mentioned Windows 8 a few times in the press release, but never once Android, so I suppose those may be reserved to Windows 8 / Blue tablets and netbooks, and we most probably won’t see any AMD based Android tablets anytime soon. There was no mention of Linux either.
Key features of AMD Elite Mobility APUs:
- Dual/Quad Core, AMD Start Now Technology w/smart sleep
- AMD Turbo Dock Technology for 40% performance boost
- “Jaguar” Core: Up to 20% improvement over “Bobcat” cores
- “GCN” GPU core: Up to 75% compute performance (GFLOP) improvement with Direct X 11.1 support
- Power gating for DCE, UVD, VCE, NB, abd DDR P-States
- Memory Support: Single-channel (64 bits) DDR3
- High Resolution display supporting up to 2560 x 1600
- Faster than real-time HD encode – H.264, SVC HDCP 2.1
- Protected Content DRM offloaded from CPU, HDCP 2.1
- Updated I/O: Up to 8 USB 2.0 and USB 3.0, 1 SATA Gen2, SD Card Readerer version 3.0 or SDIO controller.
Brad Linder, Liliputing, explains AMD expects tablets and notebook to be cheaper than equivalent Intel device, but products which similar specs such as ASUS VivoBook X202E
are already available for $400, over $100 cheaper than Acer Aspire V5-122 mentioned above, so AMD claim on price may not be valid, at least for now.
You may be able to find more information on AMD Mobility page.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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