Thursday, December 9th 2010
Gigabyte AMD Fusion ''Brazos'' Mini-ITX Motherboard Pictured
The first motherboard that brings the AMD Fusion "Brazos" platform to nettops was pictured, the GA-E350V-USB3, which is a mini-ITX motherboard that makes use of AMD Fusion E-350 accelerated processing unit (APU), and Hudson M1 chipset. AMD is targeting the nettop and HTPC markets with such motherboards, also as competitors to Atom and new Pentium Dual-Core (LGA1156/LGA1155) desktops. The GA-E350V-USB3 makes use of Gigabyte's Ultra Durable 3 construction that makes use of a PCB with 2x copper layers, solid-state capacitors, low RDS (on) MOSFETs, and ferrite core chokes.
The board uses a 3+2 phase power design. The Fusion E-350, like the Intel Atom, is hard-wired to the board, and cooled by a small fan-heatsink. It connects to two DDR3 DIMM slots for single-channel DDR3-1800+ MHz memory. The lone expansion slot is a PCI-Express 2.0 x16 (electrical x8). The Fusion APU packs two x86-64 cores clocked at 1.60 GHz, and an AMD Radeon HD 6310 graphics processor that features 80 stream processors, and clock speed of 500 MHz. Connectivity include four SATA 3 Gb/s ports, 8-channel HD audio, two USB 3.0 ports, display connectivity includes DVI, D-Sub, and HDMI. Pricing and availability are not known, as AMD didn't officially launch the platform.
Source:
Xbit Labs
The board uses a 3+2 phase power design. The Fusion E-350, like the Intel Atom, is hard-wired to the board, and cooled by a small fan-heatsink. It connects to two DDR3 DIMM slots for single-channel DDR3-1800+ MHz memory. The lone expansion slot is a PCI-Express 2.0 x16 (electrical x8). The Fusion APU packs two x86-64 cores clocked at 1.60 GHz, and an AMD Radeon HD 6310 graphics processor that features 80 stream processors, and clock speed of 500 MHz. Connectivity include four SATA 3 Gb/s ports, 8-channel HD audio, two USB 3.0 ports, display connectivity includes DVI, D-Sub, and HDMI. Pricing and availability are not known, as AMD didn't officially launch the platform.
22 Comments on Gigabyte AMD Fusion ''Brazos'' Mini-ITX Motherboard Pictured
this will be my perfect netbox.
I think this is going to be very interesting. Even if Bulldozer doesn't take the high end processing crown, AMD seems positioned to have a major take over in the Low power and low profile market.
Cut it down to 800 Mhz processor cores, 24 Stream processors and around say 1W idle and 10W maximum. Then stick this in a cell phone.
and with bigger heatsink, but this is a great product!
expect 9 gb/sec over this, far better than intel core 2 platform, memory is no problem.
10W maximum is too much for a cellphone. it would not work at all. it would require twice as big battery.
change idle usage to maximum usage then we're somewhere.
X86 will never be able to compete with arm in mobile department, end of story, stop dreaming about it folks.
Not going to happen!
2ghz, microatx, more ports.
then we're starting to get some serious low power nas's.
I using a Zotac Atom-Ion mini ITX board with 4 sata ports :)
And I am waiting for the new AMD fusion itx products, to build more robust samba server
and +1 to csendesmark, bigger hsf is required; I hate those buzzy little fans.
They are targeting UMPC's and handheld devices, (like the Nintendo 3DS and Sony PSP) so I don't think a RISC chip is too far off. Mario Rivas (AMD's Executive VP) stated he would like to explore a simplified Bobcat chip with a power consumption down to 250 mW. If he pushes the idea and they can get some R&D on it, I don't think it would be hard.
Its already the size of a dime. If 80 SPU's and 2 cores at 1.6 Ghz can stay in the 1W to 10W range, I see no reason it cannot be done. Considering the amount of stuff that can be removed just because it would be an embedded chip, and limitations of what it would be expected to do can get it into the right power envelope.