When AMD acquired the famous dark force of graphic chip developer ATI, they had a wild dream of fusing together graphic chips with CPU processors, creating a totally new hybrid species that’s supposed to be stronger than both Zerg and Protoss. They’re hoping that this new APU species will eventually let AMD win the ‘rather impossible currently’ war against chipzilla Intel.

APU, what AMD called as Accelerated Processing Units, is a fusion of both graphic and core processing genes, which will eliminate the need for a North Bridge graphic chip, for the embedded graphic system market. A similar concept to Intel’s Core i3 processor, and their H57 chipset motherboards.

The first Fusion project was Llano, targeted for mainstream notebooks/desktops, which is where the Core i3 stands now. Llano will integrate a 32nm derivative of the current Phenom II architecture with a relatively capable DirectX 11 AMD GPU. Llano isn’t due out until sometime in 2011 so details are still light. However, AMD just released some details on its lower end Fusion APUs that will begin shipping in Q4 2010 (OEM system availability in Q1 2011).

Bobcat is the CPU core. It is ‘an out-of-order alternative’ to Intel’s Atom that has the potential to offer significantly higher performance. However, Bobcat is only a part of the equation for this Fusion technology of AMD.

AMD will be shipping two Bobcat based APUs in Q4: Ontario and Zacate. Both APUs implement two Bobcat-cores and a DX11 AMD GPU with an undisclosed number of cores. Ontario is aimed at netbooks/nettops, which AMD hopes to challenge the greatly successful Atom, while Zacate can be used in ultra-thin and budget notebooks/desktops, something equivalent to Intel’s CULV-class processors (Consumer Ultra Low Voltage).

In IFA Berlin, AMD announced some slight details of the Ontario and Zacate. Ontario’s TDP (thermal design power) stands at 9W, while Zacate is rated at 18W. In comparison, Intel’s latest Atom N550 dual-core processor stands at 8.5W with the on-die graphics. Thought AMD’s Ontario is somewhat more ‘power hungry’ by 0.5W, AMD is hoping to out-win the Atom processor’s performance by some margin, as they’re using a DX11 AMD GPU which should be stronger than Intel’s mere 200MHz graphic chip.

SOURCE via Anandtech