AMD launched its Fusion family of APUs, or Accelerated Processing Units, which is the term used by the company to denote a CPU and GPU solution integrated on a single die.
The APUs, which will be divided into the E-Series and the C-Series, will have multi-core x86-based CPUs integrated with a graphics processor, which according to the company, will be able to handle 1080p high-definition video playback yet consumes less power.
The E-Series APU, which will be available for mainstream notebooks and all-in-one desktop PCs, is said to be very low-power yet offer better gaming performance, thanks to a more powerful, DirectX 11-capable GPU.
According to Bob Grim, director of client product marketing for the Computing Solutions Group at AMD, the E-Series offers up to 30% better performance in 3DMark '06 with the same class processor from the competition.
On the netbook front, AMD has the C-Series, which consumes so little power that AMD claims it will offer up to 12 hours battery life while giving 11x more graphics performance compared with current netbooks.
Over 35 AMD Fusion-based machines are set to launch in Asia in the first half of 2011 from PC makers like Acer, Dell, Fujitsu, Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba, with a number of these already in stores as you read this.
Later in the year, AMD will release the A-Series Fusion APU built on the 32nm (nanometre) process, which will be meant for high-performance desktop PCs and will have a whopping 500-Gigaflops of processing power.
