At the 6th Annual AMD Technical Forum & Exhibition (TFE) 2010, AMD today showcased for its ecosystem partners the first public demonstration of the forthcoming AMD Fusion Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) codenamed "Llano", designed for notebook, ultrathin and desktop PCs. AMD demonstrated the accelerated single-chip processing muscle of Llano by simultaneously processing three separate compute-and graphics-intensive workloads.

"The serial and powerful parallel processing capability of the Llano APU has the potential to make OEMs and consumers re-think their computing experience," said Chris Cloran, corporate vice president and general manager, client division, AMD. "The experience potential of Llano is truly incredible, and the demos we showed today on stage provide a glimpse of what this processor is capable of delivering in sleek form factors with long battery life. Everything consumers love about their digital lifestyles today - social networking, gaming, consuming and creating media - can be enhanced with Llano, enabling a more interactive, vivid and immersive experience."

Today at the Canalys Channels Forum in Barcelona, AMD is marking the one-year anniversary of the AMD Fusion Partner Program with the introduction of the AMD Fusion Partner Program distributor track. The expanded program will provide distributor partners access to all of the benefits within the AMD Fusion Partner Program to help accelerate sales of AMD-based solutions. AMD is also unveiling the AMD Rewards Program, which creates added sales-based incentives for partners to drive channel sales growth.

"It's amazing to see how far we've come in such a short amount of time," said David Kenyon, corporate vice president, Worldwide Channel Marketing, AMD. "By extending the AMD Fusion Partner Program to all of our valued distribution partners, AMD is proud to now offer them vital information, motivation, support and incentives to help them to be successful in today's marketplace."

At least two new Fusion APU models based on the "Zacate" silicon are slated for Q1 2011. The Fusion "Zacate" processors are meant for ultra-portables, nettops, and SFF PCs, with a small TDP of 18W, an even lower-power version codenamed "Ontario" is being worked on, with a TDP of 9W. The first two Zacate chips include Fusion E240 single-core, and Fusion E350 dual-core. These chips are based on the Bobcat architecture, and pack DirectX 11 compliant IGPs with UVD 3.0, a single-channel DDR3 memory controller. The platform release will include the supportive Hudson D1 chipset.

Next week in San Francisco, AMD will unveil the first North America public demonstrations of its AMD Fusion Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) codenamed "Zacate," a new dual-core, 18-watt TDP processor containing discrete-level graphics capabilities on die and designed to dramatically improve the user's PC experience. Targeting value and mainstream notebooks and desktops, "Zacate" APU-based platforms bring many of the vivid digital computing experiences once reserved for high-end PCs into the opening price points of the mainstream segment.

AMD will conduct demonstrations of the experience consumers can expect to see early in 2011 from a broad range of mainstream notebook and desktop PCs based on the AMD Fusion APU codenamed "Zacate", including:

• Full HD streaming online video, showcasing the versatility of the "Zacate" APU-based platform to handle the most demanding multimedia tasks
• Immersive online gaming with high image-quality settings, demonstrating the DirectX 11-compliant "Zacate" APU-based platform
• Preview of accelerated Internet browsing, showing how "Zacate" APU-based platforms support the future of GPU-enabled web browsing today and how these platforms perform side-by-side against currently available AMD- and Intel processor-based notebooks

Here is the first picture of a working prototype of the AMD Radeon HD 6000 series "Cayman" graphics card. This particular card is reportedly the "XT" variant, or what will go on to be the HD 6x70, which is the top single-GPU SKU based on AMD's next-generation "Cayman" performance GPU. The picture reveals a card that appears to be roughly the size of a Radeon HD 5870, with a slightly more complex-looking cooler. The PCB is red in color, and the display output is slightly different compared to the Radeon HD 5800 series: there are two DVI, one HDMI, and two mini-DisplayPort connectors. The specifications of the GPU remain largely unknown, except it's being reported that the GPU is built on the TSMC 40 nm process. The refreshed Radeon HD 6000 series GPU lineup, coupled with next-generation Bulldozer architecture CPUs and Fusion APUs are sure to make AMD's lineup for 2011 quite an interesting one.Update (9/9): A new picture of the reverse side of the PCB reveals 8 memory chips (256-bit wide memory bus), 6+2 phase VRM, and 6-pin + 8-pin power inputs.

At the ongoing IFA event in Berlin, AMD displayed one of the first derivatives of its Bobcat low-power x86 processor architecture, codenamed "Ontario". This Fusion APU (accelerated processing unit), which is a combination of an x86 CPU and a DirectX 11 compliant GPU is built for low-power devices such as netbooks, handhelds, and tablets. AMD also showed off the chip package itself, which is roughly the size of a 1 Euro coin. The package, like AMD's mobile Athlon/Phenom processors, has no integrated heatspreader (IHS), but like the Intel Atom, uses a ball-grid array (BGA) to permanently fix itself to the system board.

AMD claims that the chip offers "mainstream performance" at less than half the die area (in this case, below 100 mm²), and a fraction of the power. Speaking of which, the "Ontario" Fusion APU has a TDP of 9W, while a higher-performance APU codenamed "Zacate", which is probably competitive with Intel's CULV processors, and is built for ultra-thin notebooks, nettops and slim all-in-one PCs, has a TDP of 18W. AMD claims that the two will ship (to OEMs, because these are not end-user products) in Q4 2010. For the desktop, AMD is developing the "Llano" Fusion APUs that are of a different form-factor and package altogether.

The first official die-shots of the first Bulldozer architecture derivative, the eight-core "Orochi" Opteron die was displayed at Global Technology Conference, by GlobalFoundries, AMD's principal foundry-partner. While AMD did not give out a die-map to go with it, the structures we can make out are four Bulldozer modules holding two cores and a shared L2 cache each, a L3 cache spread across four blocks that's shared between all cores, the northbridge-portion cutting across the die at the center, and the integrated memory controller along its far-right side. Various I/O portions are located along the other three sides.

Next up is the Llano die. This is AMD's very first Fusion APU (accelerated processing unit) die. It is based on the K10 architecture and integrates a graphics processor and northbridge completely into one die. It precedes APUs based on the Bobcat architecture. Fortunately, there is a die-map at hand, which shows four K10 cores with dedicated 1 MB L2 caches per core, no L3 cache, an integrated SIMD array that holds 480 stream processors. The GPU component is DirectX 11 compliant. Other components include an integrated northbridge, integrated memory controller, integrated PCI-Express root complex, and HyperTransport interface to the chipset.

Worldwide PC microprocessor unit shipments and revenues in the second calendar quarter of 2010 (2Q10) increased 3.6% and 6.2%, respectively, compared to the first quarter of 2010, according to the latest PC processor study from International Data Corporation (IDC).

The average sequential change in unit shipments between a calendar year's first quarter and its second quarter is an increase of 1.6%. For revenues, the average sequential change is a decrease of -2.8%. So, these increases represent better performance than usual for a second calendar quarter.

"Such a sequential increase in PC processor shipments alone would have been enough to conclude that the first half was strong for the market," said Shane Rau director of Semiconductors: Personal Computing research at IDC. "However, a modest rise in revenues, too, points directly to a rise in average selling prices. System makers bought more and higher-priced PC processors in 2Q10 than in 1Q10. Digging a little deeper into the numbers shows that they bought more mobile processors and more server processors, while desktop processors remained flat."

AMD today announced the availability of the ATI Stream Software Development Kit (SDK) v2.2 with full OpenCL 1.1 support to provide developers with the tools they need to build incredible next-generation applications. By taking advantage of both CPU and GPU processing power in a given system, applications like 3D video, HD video chat and multi-display 3D gaming are possible.

A development platform created by AMD, the ATI Stream SDK v2.2 brings a wide range of tools to the developer community including support for OpenCL 1.1, in addition to Ubuntu 10.04 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5. This updated development platform empowers the developer community to accelerate applications on the CPU and GPU quickly and efficiently. The new version is available for download here.

AMD demonstrated its first Fusion APU (accelerated processing unit), which is a "fusion" between a processor and a graphics processor. The first such processor in the works is based on the 32 nm silicon fabrication technology, codenamed Llano, and fuses a quad-core processor with a DirectX 11 compliant GPU. AMD's Rick Bergman showed off a wafer of the Llano APUs, but it didn't stop there. Rick surprised the press when he went on to claim that the APU can power Aliens vs. Predator in DirectX 11 mode, with a reasonable level of detail, which was demonstrated. Find a video of the same at the source.

AMD today announced the appointment of Manju Hegde as corporate vice president, Fusion Experience Program. A renowned parallel and visual computing innovator, Hegde previously served as vice president of CUDA Technical Marketing at NVIDIA before joining AMD to lead the AMD Fusion Experience Program, an initiative focused on identifying innovative computing solutions and applications poised to take full advantage of the forthcoming AMD Fusion family of Accelerated Processing Units (APU). Hegde reports to Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, AMD Products Group.

"We are thrilled to be able to attract an experienced industry leader like Manju Hegde to the AMD team, a sign of the quality of talent we are able to attract to AMD on the strength of our Fusion roadmap," said Bergman. "Manju brings prized expertise in developing the ecosystem for enabling breakthrough and heightened experiences on new architectures to AMD. As Manju and his team work with the ecosystem to usher in a new era of visual computing, we expect a wide range of industry leaders to embrace the future of accelerated computing through the combination of the GPU and CPU -- a combination only AMD can deliver with its AMD Fusion technology."

AMD today announced that it has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, under which the Ministry will award a five-year grant of $56.4 million CAD ($52.8M USD) to AMD Canada under Ontario's Next Generation of Jobs Fund. The grant is expected to fund R&D activities by AMD's Markham-based engineers in the development of its upcoming AMD Fusion family of processors, related software infrastructure and integrated computing platforms. Ontario expects to make its initial investment of $11.2 million CAD to AMD upon signing the formal agreement, with periodic payments occurring thereafter throughout the grant period.

In turn, AMD will commit to substantially invest in AMD Fusion processor-related R&D activities in Markham, and retain and create hundreds of high-value R&D jobs during the grant time frame. AMD also plans to increase collaborative activities with local universities.

AMD, in its presentation at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) 2010, presented its plan to build its much talked about 'Fusion' processor platform, codenamed Llano, central to which, is the Accelerated Processing Unit (APU). AMD's APU is expected to be the first design to embed a multi-core x86 CPU and a GPU onto a single die. This design goes a notch ahead of Intel's recently released 'Clarkdale' processor, where Intel strapped a 32 nm dual-core CPU die and a 45 nm northbridge die with integrated graphics, onto an MCM (multi chip module) package. Llano is also expected to feature four processing cores, along with other design innovations.

Some of the most notable announcements in AMD's presentation is that the company will begin sampling the chip to its industry partners within the first half of 2010. The Llano die will be build on a 32 nm High-K Metal Gate process. On this process, each x86 core will be as small as 9.69 mm². Other important components on the Llano die are a DDR3 memory controller, on-die northbridge, and a DirectX 11 compliant graphics core derived from the Evergreen family of GPUs. The x86 cores are expected to run at speeds of over 3 GHz. Each core has 1 MB of dedicated L2 cache, taking the total chip cache size to 4 MB.

Toshiba's Digital Products Division (DPD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., today unveiled the Qosmio X500 Series, an enthusiast-class line of performance laptops geared for high definition multimedia and gaming. Featuring a striking design on the outside and packed with premium technologies and features on the inside, the Qosmio X500 Series offers hardcore gamers and digital content creators a portable, well-equipped "pro-class" laptop.

Qosmio X500 Series laptops feature the new Intel Core i7 processor, delivering four cores of intelligent processing power, Windows 7 and Intel's Turbo Boost Technology, which automatically allows processor cores to run faster than the base operating frequency if it is operating below power, current and temperature specification limits. The laptops also offer ultra-fast DDR3 system memory, dual hard-drive configurations, as well as NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250M graphics with 1GB of GDDR5 video memory. Together, this pairing of high-performance technologies allow consumers to rip through the latest 3D games at lightning-fast frame-rates or create hi-definition video and audio faster and more efficiently with smooth rendering and encoding.

AMD today announced a new way to help consumers select the PC that best meets their needs. Working with retailers and PC manufactures, VISION Technology from AMD breaks the model in how PC benefits are communicated. Rather than the traditional model, which focuses on the technical specifications of individual hardware components, VISION communicates the value of the whole system and demonstrates the combined processing power of both the CPU and GPU to deliver a superior visual experience to mainstream PC users. It emphasizes how an AMD-based PC is optimized for video, digital media and content creation activities. VISION guides the industry past the era of CPU-centric marketing and describes the PC capabilities in terms of what can be enjoyed on the system - see, share, create. This helps consumers to make better informed buying decisions.

"Today's consumer cares about what they can do with their PC, not what's inside," said Nigel Dessau, CMO of AMD. "They want a rich HD and entertainment experience on their PC, delivered by the combined technology of AMD CPUs and GPUs, without having to understand what gigahertz and gigabytes mean. VISION technology from AMD reflects the maturation of marketing in the PC processing industry and communicates the technology in a more meaningful way."

Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, today announced a new study that indicates the end of the market for the popular integrated graphics chipset, known as the IGP.

After fifteen years of stellar growth the IGP will cease to exist, replaced by embedded graphics in the processor. Integrated graphics are used in desktop and net top PCs, notebooks, and netbooks, and various embedded systems such as point of sale, set-top boxes, and signage systems.

Patriot Memory, a global pioneer in high-performance memory, NAND flash and computer technology, today announced the release of their Fusion SSD Series. The Fusion SSD line has been specifically designed with cutting-edge technology by adding 64MB of DRAM cache in conjunction with its current equipped NAND technology. The ultimate result is an SSD that allows faster transfer rates between the controller and the host device.

"By the addition of the DRAM cache, the Fusion greatly increases the random and sequential read and write transfer rates," according to Meng J. Choo, Patriot's Flash Product Manager. He goes on to say, "The DRAM acts as a buffer and increases the reliability, and lessens the possibility for 'bottlenecks' within the data transfers."

Chip maker Advanced Micro Devices has released a beta version of Fusion Media Explorer, the company's first 3D media browser. Distributed for free for Windows and Linux, the AMD Fusion Media Explorer (FME) works relatively simple. The software allows people who installed it to easily upload and share multimedia files such as video or music through social-network sites like Flickr, Facebook, Microsoft Live and YouTube. They only need to select the files for upload from a rotating 3D interface and drag and drop them to finish the procedure. Similarly, multimedia files can also be downloaded from some of the above mentioned sites to a PC through drag and drop. The FME also integrates own search engine, and a player for the locally stored multimedia files. The point of existance for such a browser according to AMD, is to showcase the multimedia capabilities of PCs based on AMD's Phenom II and Turion Ultra processors along with ATI premium graphics cards. You can get the browser for free here.

AMD today launched the first official version of its Fusion Gaming Utility. Working on AMD systems only, the Fusion Gaming Utility turns off various Windows processes and thus gains some additional performance when needed. AMD Fusion works with both Microsoft Windows XP 32/64-bit and Windows Vista 32/64-bit.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Fusion Gaming Utility Version 1.0

Today at CES, AMD President and Chief Executive Officer Dirk Meyer and OTOY Chief Executive Officer Jules Urbach unveiled a plan to revolutionize the deployment, development and delivery of HD content through the "AMD Fusion Render Cloud", a massively-parallel supercomputer. The announcement took place during AMD's Industry Insider Series keynote at the Las Vegas Hilton Theater, where AMD was joined on stage by industry luminaries such as Lucasfilm, Dell, HP and Electronic Arts.

"AMD has a long track record in the supercomputing world. Seven out of 10 of the world's fastest machines, including the fastest two computers on the planet, are powered by AMD hardware," said Meyer. "Today, AMD is pleased to announce a new kind of supercomputer unlike any other ever built. It is being designed to break the one petaFLOPS barrier, and to process a million compute threads across more than 1,000 graphics processors. We anticipate it to be the fastest graphics supercomputer ever. And it will be powered by OTOY's software for a singular purpose: to make HD cloud computing a reality. We plan to have this system ready by the second half of 2009."

Empowering consumers to get elite-level computing performance for under $900 U.S. dollars, AMD today launched "Dragon" platform technology for desktop PCs featuring the new AMD Phenom II X4 processor. Even the most demanding users such as enthusiasts and high-end gamers desire affordable systems capable of delivering HD entertainment, graphic-intensive game play at the highest settings their monitors can handle, as well as quick and easy transfer of video entertainment to and from mobile devices. Dragon platform technology provides the power to do it all by combining AMD's highest-performing CPU, the AMD Phenom II X4 processor, with award winning ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series graphics and AMD 7-Series chipsets. And it's offered at an incredible value with Dragon-based systems available for up to $1,200 U.S. dollars less than competing systems that deliver comparable performance.

Leading global PC manufacturers HP, Dell and Alienware plan to offer Dragon platform technology-based desktop systems in the first quarter of 2009, with Dell offering immediate availability in its Dell XPS desktop line. "The XPS 625 desktop powered by AMD's Dragon platform technology features new AMD Phenom II processors to enable a significant boost in speed for enhanced gaming, as well as the flexibility to enable multi-tasking and HD video capabilities free from delays, stalls and lags," said Arthur Lewis, general manager of Dell Gaming Group. "The XPS 625 gives gamers the unbelievable experience they expect at a price point that won't break the bank."

Following the startling revelation by AMD, on just how much overclocking headroom its upcoming Phenom II processors offer, the company is on course for the announcement of the AMD Dragon enthusiast desktop PC platform. The AMD Dragon platform consists of a Phenom II X4 processor and Radeon HD 4800 series based graphics setup running on a 7-series chipset based motherboard. Earlier, a slide confidential to its channel partners was leaked to the media, showing up to 280% increments in gaming performance over its predecessor, the AMD Spider platform. Legit Reviews took a quick snap of the platform logo for AMD Dragon, showing a dark dragon with red glowing eyes holding the AMD Fusion badge. It also reveals the company's slogan for the platform: "Fusing technology with strength." Throughout the product launch phase for its 45nm Opteron processor, AMD has been largely conservative about its performance expectations, though with its desktop variants, the Phenom II series, AMD has been a little enthusiastic off late, advertising it as something "Beyond Expectations". It remains to be seen as to how far the company lives up to delivering to all the hype that has been created so far.

AMD conducted a presentation at CEATEC Japan, where the company took a sneak-peak at how the role of GPUs would become critical to the PC of tomorrow. This of course revolved around the company's newly adopted "The Future is Fusion" slogan, integrating all of AMD's technological expertise into object and function oriented solutions for the PC industry.

Among the numerous slides that formed part of the presentation, one such slide, shows some very interesting points on what the year 2009 looks like, from AMD's perspective. It shows a lot of things slated for much later to make it to the industry. To begin with, the DirectX 11 API and Windows 7 (Vienna) operating system could make it to the industry in 2009. However, there's no mention of them being "released" as such, or if they could just be working prototypes, such as alpha releases for use by select parts of the industry for mutual technology development.

The Swiss cooling solutions provider ARCTIC COOLING, which is famous for its low noise cooling-solutions for CPUs and GPUs is presenting its first power supply unit - the Fusion 550R. In a close cooperation with Seasonic, ARCTIC COOLING has developed a PSU that not only fulfils highest demands but is at the same time virtually silent and highly efficient.

AMD Fusion could well be the first CPU to feature a graphics processor core. It will incorporate a graphics processor with specifications identical to the RV710. This CPU would be based on the 45 nm silicon fabrication process, and this processor will be manufactured at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). This GPU will be called "Kong". Here are its specifications:

• Core Frequency between 600 ~ 800 MHz
• 128-bit wide memory bus (DDR3, Side-port supportive)
• 40 Stream Processors
• 8 TMUs, 4 ROPs
• DirectX 10.1 support
• UVD