AMD Llano: Fusion for the Mainstream

INTRODUCTION

Ten years ago, CPU design was all about the MHz: having a higher frequency processor meant better performance when software was single threaded in a serial manner. Then, the advent of multi-core processors in 2005 changed the concept of processing. A single CPU packed with two or more processing cores can speed up work and open the door to the world of parallelism.

Around the same time, a budding trend started in the industry where components were being integrated into the processor. This started with Athlon 64, which had the memory controller integrated into the CPU die. Then AMD made a big announcement with “Fusion” in 2006, which would have integrated a GPU into the CPU, and created the Fusion APU (Accelerated Processing Unit). The trend continued, and now the latest AMD processor, codenamed Llano, packs not only four CPU cores, a Radeon GPU, and memory controller but also a Northbridge and a universal video acceleration block.

Tightly integrating these components inside the CPU, would significantly reduce latency, as it shorten the distance information needs to travel when communicating between the components. This, in turn, yields significant speed advantages. Furthermore, it allows tighter resource management that can better take advantage of the parallelism workload found in today’s applications.

Designed for both mobile and mainstream computers, Llano is far from being just a piece of hardware. With the Fusion APU (Llano and Bobcat), AMD is trying push a new concept of balanced processing into mainstream computing.

As technophiles, we cannot deny that we want the fastest performance PC available. But sometimes, we have to wonder, just how fast is too fast? Most PC's on the market today are fast enough to handle day to day tasks such as web browsing, media streaming, and word processing. A dual core Athlon II or Core i3-2100 is really fast enough for an average user, and having a faster processor such as a Phenom II X4 or Core i5-2500K will not help get these things done any faster. Yes, people who do a lot of HD encoding, 3D rendering, and scientific computing will definitely benefit from the extra cores and faster clockspeed. For most people though, unless the software catches up, the performance gain may not be as apparent as it would seem.

With Fusion, AMD tried to get users to re-think our computer usage model. Instead of always going for the fastest CPU, the Fusion APU is designed to yield a tangible performance enhancement that an average computer user can take full advantage of. Llano is not designed to take home any awards based on its CPU alone, though it is packed with plenty of computing power, so that an average user would not experience any major performance hit. However, it is paired with an integrated graphics chip that is much more powerful than other CPU's on the market, namely Intel's flagship Sandy Bridge.

AMD stated that every minute, average 35 hours of video was uploaded to YouTube in 2010. In AMD’s view, average PC users’ demand is not just a processor that can do computational work, but also handle HD content and simple games. AMD believes graphical power is just as important as CPU power for today's PC users. With Llano, AMD wants to offer a chip with balanced CPU and GPU performance.