AMD delivers the E-series APUs for notebooks and desktops

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the launch of its latest AMD E-Series Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) platform. Designed for essential notebook and desktop personal computers which meet basic performance needs at accessible price points, the 2012 AMD E-Series APU enables long battery life, and a best-in-class entertainment and media experience while striking a balance between energy efficiency and unique innovations for brilliant high definition (HD) entertainment.

“In 2011 we showed the industry you could get discrete-level GPU power in a notebook without added power consumption or cost, resulting in the most successful notebook platform in AMD’s history,” said Chris Cloran, corporate vice president and general manager, AMD Client Business Unit. “Today we raise the bar even higher with our latest APU offering. Our 2012 AMD E-Series APU gives consumers a visually superior choice for everyday performance with the latest graphics technology and nearly 3 hours more battery life than the competition.”

Formerly codenamed “Brazos 2.0,” the 2012 AMD E-Series APU is the feature-rich update to the most successful AMD notebook processor platform ever. Unique benefits of the new platform include:

Improved mobility with up to 36 percent longer battery life compared to the competition[ii]. Systems based on the 2012 AMD E-Series APU can deliver up to 11 hours of resting battery life1 and up-to a 90 minute competitive advantage in Web browsing and online flash gaming[iii];

Enhanced video experience with technology to help remove shakes and jitters from online or other video files through AMD Steady Video technology[iv], which has plug-in support for all major Web browsers along with Windows Media Player and the open source VLC player;

Leading-edge gaming experience. The 2012 AMD E-Series APU platform is the only essential notebook platform that offers built-in AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 Series graphics with DirectX® 11 and DirectCompute for a more feature-rich experience on the latest games;

Superior online experience with AMD Quick Stream technology which prioritizes Internet bandwidth towards video stream buffering or online gaming for a smoother, virtually uninterrupted browsing experience[v];

10x faster data transfer speeds (5Gbps) with external hard drives and cameras thanks to two SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports[vi];

Increased performance through Central Processing Unit (CPU) and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) frequency boosts;

The capability to project to external 3D displays for the latest 3D video and gaming.

Accelerated Experience
Thanks to the compute capabilities in AMD Radeon HD graphics, major Web browsers such as Internet Explorer 9, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome offer an accelerated Web experience on the new AMD E-Series APUs. AMD has collaborated with Microsoft to optimize the new AMD E-Series APUs for key features in Microsoft Windows® 8 to help improve the overall experience. Optimizations for HTML5 and full support for the new Metro user interface will help accelerate new Metro-based apps developed for Microsoft’s newest operating system.

Developer Community Engagement
For developers who want to engage in the industry’s move toward heterogeneous computing and GPU compute, the upcoming AMD Fusion12 Developer Summit will offer them a unique opportunity to enhance their knowledge base. More information on AFDS 12 can be found here.

Availability and Technical Details
AMD expects global OEMs such as Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba to offer AMD E-Series APU-based systems.