Advanced Micro Devices confirmed last week (audio) that it has received samples of Llano and Ontario, the company’s Fusion products for the notebook/DTR and ultra-mobile markets, respectively.
“We plan to commence volume production in the back half of this year. We do now have internal samples of both of our initial Fusion designs, we are learning quite a lot, and are quite happy with what we see, and we started sampling to select customers, one of those two designs,” said AMD CEO and President Dirk Meyer said during a quarterly conference call with financial analysts.
Llano
AMD Llano
Based on AMD’s “Fusion” initiative, the Llano APU will combine x86 processor cores and a GPU into a single processor package. Each Llano CPU contains four x86 cores with 35 million transistors occupying just shy of 10mm² (L2 cache notwithstanding). Initial Llano chips will target a TDP of just 2.5-25W, 0.8V-1.3V core voltage and frequencies exceeding 3.0GHz. Further, Llano CPUs are expected to offer some implementation of AMD’s recently-announced Turbo CORE technology, which dynamically scales a processor’s clockspeed in response to the number of active cores.
Although not much is known about the graphics side of the equation, we do know that Llano will ship with 480 stream processors picked from the Mobility Radeon HD 5000-series. This means Llano-equipped notebooks will offer DirectX 11 support, smooth HD playback capabilities and–at a bare minimum–support for rudimentary gaming and rather robust battery lives.
As a component, Llano will fit into the Sabine platform, which AMD is preparing for full-size and desktop replacement (DTR) notebooks. Sabine will offer support for PCIe graphics, up to 16 USB 3.0 ports, 6 Serial ATA ports, RAID, gigabit Ethernet, HDMI output and so on. Sabine may additionally feature a discrete GPU based on an upcoming DirectX 11 Mobility Radeon design.
As a final note, Sabine CPUs will be built on a 32nm process and ship in volume in 2011.
Ontario
Considerably less is known about Ontario, another APU being designed for ultra-thin and netbook products. What we do know, however, is that the product is based on AMD’s upcoming Bobcat architecture, a CPU architecture designed from the ground up specifically for the purposes of ultra-mobile computing.
AMD Bobcat architecture
AMD claims that Bobcat is capable of <1W operation, which usually means 0.5W, but a chip at that wattage is running so dark it makes the Red October look like a Christmas tree. More practically, Bobcat’s TDP should be around 5-10W. That envelope means Bobcat is definitely for ultra portables—its performance won’t be high enough to touch big boy chips.
On the point of performance, AMD says it’ll weigh in at “90% of today’s mainstream performance” at less than half of the die size. If AMD’s definition of mainstream is the Athlon II—an assumption which bears out in prior platform roadmaps—then Bobcat is essentially an Athlon II in a smaller, ultra mobile package. Not bad at all.
Bobcat’s most remarkable feature is not its architecture, however, but its design process. AMD has designed the Bobcat via high-level synthesis, or HLS. HLS is a process by which a chip’s design begins as an intended logic behavior written in a high-level language like C++; automated processes synthesize the behavioral blueprints into a physical hardware design which exhibits the intended behavior.
HLS is a fascinating way to rapidly design and produce a chip that can easily be modified or ported to other processes for outstanding flexibility in the market. The trade off for this agility is frequency—Bobcat’s maximum clockspeed with an HLS-driven design is about 20% lower than it could have been were it designed “by hand.”
We know that Ontario will combine two such Bobcat cores and DirectX 11 stream processors on a single package. This combination of silicon is shaping up to be one of the most robust and appropriate ultra-mobile CPU designs ever devised.
Like Llano, Ontario will also ship in 2011.
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