AMD says "Fusion" chip looks good, but is 2011 too late?
John Morris - ZDNet
AMD appears to be on track to release its first “Fusion” processor that
combines an x86 CPU core with a graphics processor on a single silicon
chip sometime in 2011. The first so-called APU, or Accelerated
Processing Unit, is code-named Llano and will be manufactured using
32nm process technology.
In an interview with the enthusiast site X-bit Labs,
Chekib Akrout, an executive who heads up AMD’s central engineering
group, said the company was happy with the results so far. “The current
schedule is for 2011 introduction so it is still early, but because we
are using an existing CPU core for the first product and not making big
changes in the memory structure right away, we feel quite confident
about where we are with Llano,” he told X-bit Labs.
Last week, a hardware site in China, Expreview.com, posted what appears to be a detailed AMD notebook roadmap.
One slide shows the Sabine notebook platform with Llano APU arriving in
2011, on the heels of a 45nm dual-core Caspian chip this year and a
45nm quad-core Champlain CPU in 2010. These are all designed for
mainstream notebooks, though Llano, which will have up to four CPU
cores, will also be used in mainstream desktops. AMD currently
manufactures desktop and server chips at 45nm, but it has not yet
released a 45nm mobile processor.
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