AMD Announces New APUs

Chip vendor takes another step in its quest to integrate CPU and GPU functions in a single unit.

AMD has announced the new AMD A10-7800 Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), adding another option to the high-end A-Series APUs, which AMD calls its "4th generation APU lineup." An APU is a single board with integrated CPU and GPU cores. APUs are designed to optimize communication between the cores for better performance and minimal space requirements. The A10-7800 comes with 12 compute cores, including 4 CPUs and 8 GPUs.
According to AMD Vice President Bernd Lienhard, the A-Series APUs are "The most advanced and developer friendly APUs from AMD to date." Since the introduction of GPUs to high-performance computing, the GPU has served a dual purpose, supporting high-end number crunching in HPC clusters as well as the quintessential end-user market for gaming systems. So far, the announcements have centered around the gaming and graphics market, however, AMD makes it clear that they see a role for the A-Series APUs as an energy-efficient alternative for HPC.