AMD unveils few Fusion details at CES

ADVANCED MICRO DEVICES (AMD) left the really interesting stuff out of its Consumer Electronics Show pre-brief this year, as Meego development and future chip power use questions went unanswered.

As with so many trade show briefings, 90 per cent of it we had all heard before but we did get some interesting tid-bits. The Krishna, Trinity and Wichita Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) that AMD announced at an analyst's day in November will tip up in 2012.

Trinity has up to four Bulldozer cores while Krishna and Wichita have one to four Bobcat cores. The Bulldozer core is a CPU with no embedded graphics processor included and chips using it will be available from mid-2011. Bobcat is a low power CPU core with an integrated graphics processor, and it is the first new CPU design that AMD will bring to market since 2003.

Trinity is fabbed at 32nm scale and Krishna and Wichita are 28nm chips, while Ontario and Zacate are 40nm parts and Llano is 45nm. AMD had earlier revealed the Thermal Design Power (TDP) ratings for Zacate and Ontario - 18W and 9W, respectively - but for now it is not making TDP information available for Llano or any of the 2012 chips.

AMD said Zacate will appear in All-in-one PCs and mini-towers and other "small form factors". As it uses Bobcat, which is a low power core, Zacate could be used for future tablets. In November AMD announced that it would support development of the Meego operating system, which is aimed at tablets.

Not wanting to be drawn too much on AMD's involvement in Meego, AMD product marketing director Bob Grim told the CES pre-brief that "it's just too soon to go into Meego", but he pointed to Acer's tablet plans and did not rule out APUs in smartphones. Grim did confirm in his presentation that AMD's Llano will be called the A series and will arrive later this year.

While there is speculation about small form factors for AMD's Fusion range, all of the chips have been announced as available for notebooks and desktops. The only significant difference in timing between the notebook and desktop roadmaps is that two CPUs will tip up, Zambezi this year, which has up to eight Bulldozer cores, and Komodo in 2012, which also has eight Bulldozer cores.

Grim's presentation also explained AMD's branding decisions under its Vision banner. Just as we have the joy of looking forward to more alphabet related names, for Krishnia, Wichita, Zambezi and Komodo, we now know that the Ontario-C series will become part of a new Vision brand called HD Internet.

The Zacate-E series will go into the mainstream Vision brand and Llano, to be known as Sabine for Notebooks, will be used in Vision Premium, Ultimate and Black lines. Danube will get a refresh and will also go into those three Vision brands. Scorpius, which has Bulldozer cores and is aimed at the desktop market, will be available only in Vision Black for the gamers out there. µ