AMD is nearing the launch of the new mid-range platform Lynx where the star will be the new APU Llano. AMD’s Llano architectre builds on both CPU and GPU components where AMD has dedicated a large portion of the chip to the integrated GPU, which is now confirmed by leaked roadmaps.
AMD Llano will be a couple of squaremillimeters bigger than Intel’s competing Sandy Bridge processors and with its 32nm HKMG manufacturing process the company has managed to fit around 1 billion transistors into the mid-range APU.
The exact size of the die is 228mm2, which is slightly more than Sandy Bridges at 216mm2, but what AMD wants to focus on is how it distributes the execution units in its circuits. AMD says that with Llano it has balanced the logics to more “modern loads” while Intel balances Sandy Bridge for regular x86 performance.
In short, this means more transistors for the GPU in AMD’s APUs than in Intel’s CPUs. Something AMD claims is the right way to go with more and more applications supporting GPU accelerated functions. AMD Llano will get at most 400 stream processors and unlike Intel’s Sandy Bridge GPU, that does sit on the same silicon as the CPU, be much tighter connected to the CPU portion of the processor. The stream processors will able to assist the CPU cores even in non-graphic applications.
Radeon HD 6550 will be the name of the most powerful GPU found in AMD’s APUs, supporting DirectX 11 and frequencies up to 594 MHz. As we’ve confirmed earlier Llano’s integrated graphics processor will be capable of connecting with a discrete graphics card and in that way accelerate performance to levels higher than what a card from the Radeon HD 6500/6600 series could have done on its own. The technology is called Hybrid CrossFireX and will launch together with the new platform sporting the AMD A75 chipset, in July.
According to Donanimhaber the operating system will read the Hybrid CrossFireX configuration as Radeon HD 6690 when the APU connects to a Turks based graphics card (Radeon HD 6570 or HD 6670), which would result in up to 880 stream processors working together.
Once again we have it confirmed that AMD is emphasizing the GPU portion of the APU, how this will fan out in performance remains to be seen, but the launch is slated for mid-July.
