AMD launched a new APU today meant for tablets and other mobile devices. The new Z-60 Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) is now the company’s lowest power APU processor. AMD is primarily pushing this chip as the best choice for tablets as thin as 10mm that are capable of running Windows 8.
The Z-60 APU supports AMD’s Start Now and AppZone technologies for fast boot and resume times and application repository respectively. AMD has stated that it identified a gap between low performance and high priced mobile devices, and believes the Z-60 APU fills that void. AMD Corporate Vice President of Ultra-Low Power Products Steve Belt further stated the following:
“Tablet users seeking an uncompromised experience for both creating and consuming content on the Microsoft Windows 8 platform now have a performance-driven, affordable option with the AMD Z-60 APU.”
Interestingly, AMD has managed to bring the TDP of the new Z-60 lower than the previous generation without sacrificing hardware or needing a new manufacturing process. While the Z-01 is part of the Brazos platform (codename Desna), the new Z-60 is codenamed Hondo and part of the Brazos-T platform, which involves several tweaks to the design to get more power efficiency.
The Z-60 has two Bobcat CPU cores clocked at 1GHz, 1MB L2 cache, and a Radeon HD 6250 GPU with 80 cores. This APU has a TDP of 4.5W, which is a noteable decrease from the Z-01's 5.9W TDP when you consider that this chip is going to be used in a battery powered, mobile device. In fact, with a Z-60 APU, AMD is claiming up to eight hours of batery life. Further, thanks to the integrated HD 6250 GPU, the Z-60 can support Direct X 11, OpenGL 4.1, and OpenCL 1.1 graphics technologies.
| CPU Cores | CPU Clockspeed | L2 Cache | Radeon GPU | GPU Cores | TDP | USB Support | |
| Z-60 | 2 | 1 GHz | 1 MB | HD 6250 | 80 | 4.5W | 3.0 |
| Z-01 (previous generation) | 2 | 1 GHz | 1 MB | HD 6250 | 80 | 5.9W | 2.0 |
AMD has announced that the Z-60 APU is shipping now to its OEM customers. The company expects that consumers should see products using the new processor as soon as the end of this year.
Read more about the future direction of AMD at PC Perspective.
Obviously being a tech geek,
Obviously being a tech geek, I keep up with tech news, but this sideswiped me, I hadnt even heard of AMD “Z Series APU’s”, lol.
Beyond that, I am really excited that Intel’s Atom has some competition (beyond the Brazos platform), I am interested to see what these will perform like on a tablet.
Tablet computeing is getting more interesting 😀
It’s a step forward, but I’ll
It’s a step forward, but I’ll be looking for AMD’s next gen. Brazos is just a bit too slow, especially at 1GHz. It may be the best x86 solution available in this power range, but that just says how far low power x86 still has to go.
Any thing that could cut into
Any thing that could cut into Intel’s sales is a good thing, and this will probably cut into Intels sales, but not by much! I hope Apple goes with an in house processor for their laptops in the future, as this would be great for the desktop gaming (it would force Intel to pay more attention to desktop processors). Now if laptop OEM’s would try to get 10 gigabit ethernet cards into laptops, that would force Intel to play fair with their thunderbolt technology!