Howdy folks, yes as the title says AMD has released new Llano chips in the form of the triple Core A6-3500 and the CPU-only Athlon II X4 631. Both chips are the usual 32nm SOI HKMG with the A6 running at a cool 2.1GHz with a 2.4GHz Turbo function. The GPU is marked as the 6530 and has 320 SPs with a 443MHz GPU clock. As with other Llanos this chips supports up to DDR3-1866.

The Athlon model, a renewed brand previously thought to be canceled runs a little faster at a speedy 2.6GHz but with no Turbo and of course no GPU. This chip should be a hit with people who want to get a discrete card without having the HybridGraphics. Since the APU paradigm is new I would say that this a good move.

Check them out at Newegg and Amazon.

Amazon - A63500 , Athlon II

Newegg - A6-3500 , Athlon II

Yes, after waiting with baited breath, the 16 core Interlagos Bulldozer chips are now shipping for revenue, with Cray snatching up their's for several SuperComputer projects around the world. From AMD Blogs and John Fruehe:

Last week, we passed a momentous milestone in the life of “Bulldozer” – our first production shipments have left Singapore.This is important because, while we have shipped thousands of parts up to now that were engineering samples, this first shipment of production parts is a revenue shipment, so Bulldozer is now officially in production.

Go here for the full scoop and a pic or two.

This is of course not the Zambezi 8 core enthusiast desktop chip but word from VR-Zone is that Zambezi will be officially announced on Sept 17th(grains of salt sprinkled liberally). Since server and desktop have a slightly different qualification process we can actually expect to see Zambezi systems first, hopefully around next month as former-CEO Thomas Seifert was quoted as saying both desktop and server started shipping in August in some quantity.

The key take away is that Llano’s power management is significantly more advanced than previously indicated and includes a few novel features, such as taking advantage of indirect thermal dissipation. Despite several implementation hurdles, Llano shares power between the CPUs and GPU to optimize for a given workload, which is the most important issue. While there are shortcomings in Llano's approach, this is quite understandable. The Stars CPU core and the VLIW5 GPU are old and known designs, with minimal power management. They were selected for fast time to market and minimal risk, since this was the first GPU to use SOI. Moreover, AMD did not want to invest the resources in significant power management improvements to a CPU core and GPU that are only used in a single product generation and cannot be carried forward.

DonanimHaber by way of TechPowerUp has released new leaked slides regarding AMD's next generation of low power APUs, known by the model names of C-Series and E-Series. These APUs will move closer to the SoC level of integration as it moves the FCH (Fusion Controller Hub) to the die with the existing GPU, CPU, No Bridge and UVD units. This will be a welcome addition for OEMs as it will enable an even more compact design for all form factors.

These new APUs also sport double the cores, higher clock speed and faster GPUs. As Win 8 is due mid2012 or so these chips will be right on time to place AMD at the top of the heap for all portable form factors. ARM may have the power advantage and Intel the manufacturing advantage but AMD has the advantage for overall experience with DX9\10 gaming possible and perhaps low res DX11 gaming as well. The chips also support HDMI 1.4a which is slang for HD3D. From TechPowerUp:

The biggest change here isn't the fact that there are four cores, or that it's built on 28 nm, but that Wichita and Krishna are completely single-chip. The FCH or Fusion Controller Hub has been completely fused into the APU silicon. Motherboards and notebook logic boards will have just one big chip, with no "chipset" of any form. This makes AMD's Wichita and Krishna the industry's very first true x86-based consumer SoC (system on chip). The integrated memory controller now supports DDR3-1600 MHz memory. The integrated AMD Radeon graphics is set to get a performance and SIMD boost, as well, including a Secure Asset Management Unit (SAMU). AMD's next generation APUs are slated for 2012.

Head on over for some pretty pictures. Translation required as usual.

The guys over at ARS Technica have put together a short analysis of why Intel's Pricing\feature ideas not only make it hard to choose the right processor with the right features but also makes it hard for developers and OEMs to truly optimize software for all Windows PCs. From the article:

Intel has three Core i7 2600 variants. There's the standard mainstream/business-oriented 2600, the low-power 2600 S, and the enthusiast-oriented 2600 K. The 2600 is the cheapest, the 2600 K the most expensive, with the 2600 S somewhere in between. The 2600 S is actually something of an odd-ball; it's equivalent in terms of features and specification to the 2600, but its power usage is lower (65W versus 95W), and its base clock speed is lower (2.8GHz versus 3.4GHz), even though its turbo speed is the same. For my purposes, only the 2600 and 2600 K are worth consideration; I want the higher clock speed and don't care about the difference in power usage. So given the choice between the 2600 and the 2600 K, the more expensive 2600 K should be better, shouldn't it?

This is as confusing as it can get and hearkens back to the days when I gave up trying to figure out Intel's SKUs. There are too many with too different a list of features to ever really get what you want. There are also cases where in order to get features like VT-d and TXT you have to go with Xeon and Xeon chipsets which have fewer desktop features than the Core i7 Z68 chipset.

For a real mixed up set of circumstances head on over and take some aspirin with you.

For a better experience from the low end to the high end AMD has the best feature set and price range while not have overlapping SKUs with differing functionality - like OCing or Virtualization.