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AMD sales up – but ink still red

Fresh Fusion APUs, Bulldozer on doorstep

Fusion rejiggered

On the call, AMD also said it was rejiggering its Fusion Acceleration Processing Unit (APU) product lines and schedules a bit. APUs combines CPU and GPU components in a single part, and hence El Reg calls them ceepie-geepies.

Because of yield issues on the 32 nanometer processes being perfected at the moment by GlobalFoundries, the "Llano" APU, which will be pushed out a few months in 2011, but will ship sometime in the first half of the year. As El Reg previously reported, the Llano APU takes a quad-core Phenom-II, tweaks it and implements it in 32 nanometers, and then slaps a modified version of the Radeon HD5000 series GPU on the chip. Llano APUs are aimed at high-end notebook and desktop computers.

While Llano is being pushed out, AMD's entry Fusion APU, called "Ontario" and based on the forthcoming "Bobcat" core, is being pulled forward by many months. The Ontario APU, which Meyer called "a game changer," is aimed at netbooks and entry notebooks where low power consumption but fast performance are both enviable (if contradictory) goals.

Meyer did not give out the feeds and speeds of the Ontario APU, but said it was being manufactured by AMD's GPU foundry partner, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp using its bulk 40 nanometer processes. The Ontario chip will ship for revenue in the fourth quarter and will be in products early in 2011.

Meyer also said that the "Bulldozer" core for Opteron server processors, which we told you about here, had taped out during the quarter. AMD expects to sample chips based on the Bulldozer cores in the second half of the year, and expects to see them in machines in 2011, on target with the original plan. The Bulldozer chips will be socket-compatible with the existing G34 sockets used with the Opteron 6100s and the C32 sockets used with the Opteron 4100s, and are known by the code names "Interlagos" and "Valencia," just so you can keep track. ®

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