AMD’s new low power Ontario and Zacate chips have been getting a lot of attention recently. These are the first chips for consumer laptop and desktop computers from AMD to combine the CPU and GPU onto a single chip. The company’s codenamed for the platform is Fusion, and AMD calls the new type of chip an APU, or accelerated processor unit, and the upshot is that you get high quality graphics, a fair amount of processing power, and low power consumption — Ontario chips use just 9W, while Zacate chips top out at 18W. More powerful chips are due out later this year.
But the new Fusion chips aren’t just limited to laptop and desktop applications. AMD is also introducing a new embedded chip called the G-Series which combines an x86 core with an AMD Radeon GPU. G-Series chips are designed for set-top-boxes, information kiosks, thin clients, and other devices that sort of bridge the gap between personal computers and consumer/business electronics.
Like the Ontario and Zacate chips, the Z-Series chips will come in single or dual core varieties, with TDP’s of 9W to 18W. The integrated graphics will be able to decode HD video in a variety of formats including H.264, DiVX, MPEG2, WMV, VC-1 and Adobe Flash. The chips also support DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.0.
AMD says that companies including Fujitsu, HP, Haier, and Kontron have already committed to building products with G-Series chips.