AMD Shipping Fusion APUs

Just a few minutes after seeing the Anandtech article about their preview of the AMD Brazos platform earlier today, several tech-related sites startted popping up with articles mentioning that AMD is actually shipping the first Fusion processors. Last month, AMD said they would get them out to customers by 4Q and it appears they have.

AMD started shipping them at 4am CST (US) from Singapore out to customers.

What we know, and what you can guess from the Anandtech preview, is that the first APUs (Accelerated Processing Units – part CPU, part GPU) are described by AMD CEO Dirk Meye as Ontario and Zacate. Zacate is the dual-core 18W (TDP) with faster clockspeeds on both the CPU and GPU side of thing, while the Ontario is the single-core lower-power 9W TDP. Both of them could end up in netbooks or other ultraportables, although the single-core 9W is more likely to end up in the truly small ultraportables.

Several of the articles below have pictures and discuss that AMD is really pushing the idea of HD video out from a netbook or other ultraportable. Right now, it’s pretty limited to systems such as those powered by NVIDIA’s Ion/Ion 2, like the Asus Eee PC 1215N, which is a 12.1-inch netbook. There are AMD systems out there in ultraportable form factors, most running AMD’s NEO platform, but the Brazos/Bobcat platform provides a lot more power with much better battery performance, at a cheaper cost.

Unfortunately we’ll have to wait – while the APUs are shipping to customers, those customers are the netbook and ultraportable manufacturers, and we probably won’t see anything until the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in early January.

Read:
PC Magazine
ZDNet
The Register
Daily Tech
Reuters