Embedded Systems
In February 2002, AMD acquired Alchemy Semiconductor for its Alchemy line of MIPS processors for the hand-held and portable media player markets. On June 13, 2006, AMD officially announced that the line was to be transferred to Raza Microelectronics, Inc., a designer of MIPS processors for embedded applications.
In August 2003, AMD also purchased the Geode business which was originally the Cyrix MediaGX from National Semiconductor to augment its existing line of embedded x86 processor products. During the second quarter of 2004, it launched new low-power Geode NX processors based on the K7 Thoroughbred architecture with speeds of fanless processors 667 MHz and 1 GHz, and 1.4 GHz processor with fan, of TDP 25 W. This technology is used in a variety of embedded systems (Casino slot machines and customer kiosks for instance), several UMPC designs in Asia markets, as well as the OLPC XO-1 computer, an inexpensive laptop computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries around the world. The Geode LX processor was announced in 2005 and is said will continue to be available through 2015.
For the past couple of years AMD has been introducing 64-bit processors into its embedded product line starting with the AMD Opteron processor. Leveraging the high throughput enabled through HyperTransport and the Direct Connect Architecture these server class processors have been targeted at high end telecom and storage applications. In 2007 AMD added the AMD Athlon, AMD Turion and Mobile AMD Sempron processors to its embedded product line. Leveraging the same 64-bit instruction set and Direct Connect Architecture as the AMD Opteron but at lower power levels, these processors were well suited to a variety of traditional embedded applications. Throughout 2007 and into 2008 AMD has continued to add both single-core Mobile AMD Sempron and AMD Athlon processors and dual-core AMD Athlon X2 and AMD Turion processors to its embedded product line and now offers embedded 64-bit solutions starting with 8W TDP Mobile AMD Sempron and AMD Athlon processors for fan-less designs up to multi-processor systems leveraging multi-core AMD Opteron processors all supporting longer than standard availability.
The ATI acquisition included the Imageon and Xilleon product lines. In late 2008, the entire handheld division was sold off to Qualcomm, who have since produced the Adreno series. The Xilleon division was sold to Broadcom.
In April 2007, AMD announced the release of the M690T integrated graphics chipset for embedded designs. This enabled AMD to offer complete processor and chipset solutions targeted at embedded applications requiring high performance 3D and video such as emerging digital signage, kiosk and Point of Sale applications. The M690T was followed by the M690E specifically for embedded applications which removed the TV output, which required Macrovision licensing for OEMs, and enabled native support for dual TMDS outputs, enabling dual independent DVI interfaces.
In 2008, AMD announced the Radeon E2400, the first discrete GPU in their embedded product line offering the same long term availability as their other embedded products. That was followed in 2009 with the higher performance Redeon E4690 discrete GPU.
In 2009, AMD announced their first BGA packaged e64 architecture processors, known as the ASB1 family.
In 2010, AMD announced a second generation BGA platform referred to as ASB2. They also announced several new AM3 based processors with support for DDR3 memory.
In January 2011, AMD Announced the AMD Embedded G-Series APU (accelerated processing unit). The first Fusion family APU for embedded applications. This announcement was followed by announcements for the high performance AMD Radeon E6760 and the value-conscious Radeon E6460 discrete GPUs. These solutions all added support for DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.1 and OpenCL 1.1.
In May 2012, AMD Announced the AMD Embedded R-Series APU (accelerated processing unit). This family of products incorporates the Bulldozer CPU architecture, and Discrete-class AMD Radeon™ HD 7000G Series graphics.
AMD Embedded solution offer 5+ year product life.
Read more about this topic: Advanced Micro Devices, Products and Technologies
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