Small but mighty
AMD has announced the launch of a new pair of G-Series Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) - the T40E and T40R - bringing its latest generation embedded solution below a 7W TDP. The low power consumption makes these APUs focused for use in embedded systems.
The T40E has a 6.4W TDP and features a dual-core, 1GHz 'Bobcat' CPU, while the T40R drops one of the cores for a reduced TDP of 5.5W - a reduction in TDP of 39 per cent versus the previous model. The GPU offers Direct X 11 support, as well as AMD's in Universal Media Decoder, enabling hardware-accelerated video playback over HDMI
Despite the low power draw, these chips nonetheless offer decent performance; the processor is able to run a full blown operating system, such as Windows 7, and the graphics chip has been seen pulling scores of around 1800 in 3DMark 06 - about 300 points more than an nVidia ION chip and in a more compact solution.
Combined with the controller chip with which these APUs must be paired, total system power draw is kept under 10W. As AMD measures it's TDP as a 'worst case scenario' maximum output under full load, in real world use the actual power draw, and therefore heat output, will almost always be less than this.
AMD expects these chips to make their way into a plethora of devices, including point of sale systems, set-top boxes and media players.
