Saturday, July 23, 2011

AMD Shipped More Than a Million A-Series 'Llano' APUs

During a recent conference call with analysts, AMD said that it had shipped more than one million A-Series accelerated processing units in the second financial quarter of 2011 and that it expects demand to grow rapidly in the next quarter.

"We shipped more than one million A-series APUs in the second quarter. Based on strong demand signals and SKU assortment for the second half of the year, we expect Llano ramp to outpace the Brazos ramp," said Thomas Seifert, interim chief executive officer at AMD, who was cited by Xbit Labs.

AMD started shipping the first A-Series APUs to notebook makers at the beginning of April and their official launch followed on June 15.

Right now, AMD's notebook APU range comprises seven models that feature two or four processing cores, integrated Radeon HD 6000 graphics, 2MB or 4MB of Level 2 cache and their base frequencies range between 1.4GHz and 2.1GHz.

AMD's most powerful processor in this series is called the A8-3530MX and packs four computing cores, with a base frequency of 1.9GHz, as well as Radeon HD 6620G integrated graphics.

This features no less than 400 shader processors clocked at 444MHz and OEMs have the option of pairing together with select discrete graphics cards in a Hybrid CorssFireX mode for added graphics performance.

On June 30, Llano made its debut in the desktop space, but this time, AMD's lineup includes only two APUs, the A8-3850 and the A6-3650.

All the Llano chips also include a dual-channel memory controller, a PCI Express controller and select models support the Turbo Core dynamic overclocking technology.

According to estimates provided by sources familiar with AMD's plans, the company expects FM1 APUs to account for around 45% to 50% of the company's total processor shipments in the third quarter of this year.