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ASUS preparing AMD Fusion Mini-ITX desktop
Bit-tech have scored information and a picture on ASUS' latest development - a Mini-ITX board based on AMD's upcoming Fusion APU, Ontario. Currently, most low power CPUs today are equipped with the underwhelming Atom CPU, and NVIDIA ION. Ontario promises to make a major step forward, with CPU performance double that of an Atom, and about the same as a Athlon II X2 250U. Ontario is a SoC, featuring a DX11 GPU and memory controller on die as well.
Bit-tech have scored information and a picture on ASUS' latest development - a Mini-ITX board based on AMD's upcoming Fusion APU, Ontario. Currently, most low power CPUs today are equipped with the underwhelming Atom CPU, and Nvidia Ion. Ontario promises to make a major step forward, with CPU performance double that of an Atom, and about the same as a Athlon II X2 250U. Ontario is a SoC, featuring a DX11 GPU and memory controller on die as well.
While the TDP of the entire system was previously rumoured to be 18W, recent statements have suggested power consumption well below that. As expected, the board will be passively cooled.
Small form factor desktops are appealing, especially to HPTC users. However, thus far, Intel's Atom has proved to be a real weaklink. AMD's Ontario is an extremely promising product for the SFF market, and there's no surprise that Asus is taking an active interest.
Ontario-based desktops and laptops are expected to enter retail early in 2011, with AMD shipping Ontario APUs to OEM in December 2010. Since Ontario is fabricated on the well documented and now ancient 40nm TSMC process, it is not prone to delays Globalfoundries' 32nm may cause Llano.
Reference: Bit-tech
