Being on the forefront of technology adoption as far as its graphics products go, AMD will have a notebook platform with DirectX 11 compliant integrated GPUs ready by 2011, reveal company slides sourced by Expreview. The iGPU will be part of the company's "Accelerated Processing Unit" (APU) design approach to the PC's central processing. The APU draws parallels with Intel's upcoming processor designs where the CPU package holds both the CPU and northbridge dice in a multichip-module. One of the first AMD APUs, codenamed "Llano" will be part of the company's "Sabine" mobile platform. Typically consisting of the CPU, a DDR3 memory controller, a northbridge with integrated graphics processor, and the PCI-Express root complex, APU eliminates discrete northbridge from board design.

Slated for 2011, the Llano APU comes out at a time when DirectX 11 is expected to be an established API. The iGPU will also pack UVD 3.0, a next generation hardware-accelerated video decoder by AMD. It will be built on the 32 nm manufacturing process by AMD's foundry partner(s). It features up to 4 x86 processing cores, an iGPU, a memory controller supporting DDR3-1600 memory, 128-bit floating-point execution units (present even with current generation Phenom processors), and a BGA design with a low-TDP package. Llano will be accompanied by the SB9xxM series southbridge. This chip would make for most of the board's nucleated machinery apart from the APU. It will integrate the "DAC" (we interpret audio DAC), USB 3.0 hubs with 16 ports, a 6-port SATA controller, and clock-generator.