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* Four CPU cores, DDR3 memory and a DirectX® 11 capable SIMD engine integrated on-die.
* “Llano” is scheduled to be the first design from AMD using 32nm SOI process technology
* AMD plans to launch “Llano” in 2011
* This APU is expected to first appear within the forthcoming “Sabine” platform for mainstream notebooks

— The newest addition to the AMD graphics family strengthens the world’s only complete line-up of award-winning DirectX^® 11 capable graphics cards, delivering exceptional HD multimedia and gaming performance at a mainstream price —

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Feb. 9, 2010— AMD (NYSE: AMD) today introduced the ATI Radeon™ HD 5570 graphics card, perfect for end-users seeking an energy efficient, low-profile DirectX^® 11 card for small form factor PCs. The ATI Radeon HD 5570 graphics card joins the award-winning line of AMD graphics that fully support DirectX 11, as well as ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology To enable more than two displays you require one or more panels with a DisplayPort connector or an active DisplayPort adapter. The number and configuration of display connectors may vary by AIB partner. Check with particular manufacturer for specifications. and ATI Stream capabilities. Requires application support for ATI Stream technology. This latest offering completes a full DirectX 11 refresh of AMD discrete graphics products, bringing customers a choice of cutting-edge graphics cards to match every budget and form factor.

“AMD recognizes that small form factor PCs are becoming more popular and low profile graphics upgrade options have been limited to date,” said Matt Skynner, vice president and general manager, AMD Graphics Division. “Customers purchasing small form factor PCs are looking for improved performance while gaming, watching HD video or working with the latest productivity applications.  The ATI Radeon HD 5570 graphics card delivers all of this at a price that won’t break the bank.”

In addition to ATI Eyefinity and DirectX 11 support, the ATI Radeon HD 5570 also delivers full 1080p HD playback 1080p capable monitor required. and supports ATI Stream technology,² helping to boost performance for video playback and productivity applications, all while enabling a full Microsoft Windows^® 7 experience. Windows® 7 capable PC configurations required for full Windows® 7 functionality. See www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/system-requirements.aspx.

A sleek, energy efficient PC based on ATI Radeon HD 5570 graphics, combined with new AMD Phenom™ II X4 905e processors at 65W and AMD 7-series chipsets, can power immersive gaming and vivid digital entertainment. These platforms are an excellent choice for system builders and home theater enthusiasts seeking Eye-Definition entertainment.

To summarize the Llano APU, it will contain four X86 cores each with over 35 million transistors occupying just shy of 10mm2. All four cores get their own megabyte of L2 cache SRAM (which adds to the quoted total transistor count and silicon associated with each). AMD targets operation above 3GHz and supply voltages of 0.8 to 1.3 V.

Sometime in 2011 is the date for release, and AMD confirms a 32nm process. Details about the GPU portion have not yet been released by AMD, and they did not discuss them at ISSCC.

There is another CPU in the pile, called Athlon II X2 265 clocked at 3.3GHz with 2MB total cache that comes in mid-Q3. This looks to be AMD’s fastest dual-core so far and as every other dual core on market is based on Regor dual-core and manufactured in 45nm and fits in AM3 infrastructure.

So let's get right to it. How does a full-featured Phenom II Quad Core CPU for $99 sound? AMD's new dual core hotrod, the X2 555 BE, is a special chip under the hood; in fact, it's actually an X4 and just needs a bit of help to unlock those two extra cores for all the performance goodness you can dream about at bargain prices. Does AMD want this to become widely known? We're not sure to be honest; on one hand, this could really spur a surge in sales but on the other hand it could poach their Phenom II X4 lineup. Either way, we successfully unlocked the X2 555 BE and we'll tell you how today and show the resulting performance increase.

The significance of a dedicated Geforce graphics card for physics calculations is evident from the following table. Thanks to the dedicated Geforce 9800GT, Radeon HD 5870 managed to score over 100fps even with PhysX effects set at high, and impressively enough, not even the GTX 285-9800GT combination managed to beat this. After assigning a dedicated 9800GT card for PhysX, we couldn’t change antialiasing with our Radeon card so the tables feature same results in scenarios with and without antialiasing.

When I ran Windows Experience Index, the processor got a rating of 3.2. This is 0.1 higher than the same Athlon MV-40 on the ThinkPad X100e (WEI: 3.1) because I installed 64-bit version of Windows 7.

Intel kicked off its Itanium presentation today by saying the Itanium's system revenue since the introduction of 2001 has crossed the $5 billion mark. That outsells total sales of AMD's Opterons. And, according to IDC Itanium sales surpassed all of SPARC sales for the first time since the introduction of the Itanium. That was in 2001 and was the culmination of former CEO Andy Grove's dreams of a microprocessor that was truly mission critical.

But up in East Fishkill in New York State, architects and engineers continue to design future iterations of IBM's Power family. And today IBM has released new Power 7 CPUs that are in a different league to Intel's microprocessors.