Ontario 9w and 18w versions + pics

[krumme]

http://www.hardware-infos.com/news.php?news=3681

Can we have some native german interpreters here?

"Auch das Spiel "City of Heroes" lief flüssig, allerdings in stark verringerten Einstellungen, welche wohl recht nahe am Minimum lagen. Allerdings muss bedacht werden, dass es sich bei Zacate lediglich um eine kleine APU handelt, welche etwa mit einem Intel Atom konkurrieren soll und dies dürfte AMD gelingen. Denn gefühlt lief das System bei allen Aufgaben wesentlich flüssiger als jedes uns bekannte Netbook auf Intel Atom-Basis, zudem verriet uns eine Firmennahe Quelle, das zum Beispiel StarCraft II auch auf mittleren Settings spielbar sein soll"

...feels much more fuent than all known Atom systems...

"Im Gespräch mit John Taylor erfuhren wir weitere Details und konnten auch eine Zacate APU samt Package in BGA-Bauweise in den Händen halten. Das Package misst etwa 1,5 x 1,5 cm Kantenlänge, die Die der APU selbst ist etwas kleiner als die eines RV810 GPU (63 mm²), siehe Bild oben. Zacate weist, wie bereits erwähnt, eine TDP von 18 Watt auf, der "kleine" Bruder Ontario mit 9 Watt genau die Hälfte"

Sounds realy, realy good. Down the drain with all celeron, all culv processors, athlon2 and ...Llano (?) .

What this also could indicate is that lowend desktop system as well as lowend, perhaps even midrange, notebooks, will adopt ontario. This is not only a tablet type cpu. This is a flexible, scalable building block. Welcome to the future.

[redpriest]

From HW-info - all demonstrations done on A0 silicon. Basically, the design is ridiculously healthy:

http://www.insidehw.com/Editorials/E...pressions.html

[krumme]

Nice to hear, we need it fast and cheap

Damn this is the most exiting thing happening to the CPU business since the 386 design that introduced us to windows , this dirt cheap ontario will, at least when hitting 28nm, bring fuent running windows7 to a broad portfolio of devices and applications all over the world for a huge population. Bang ! Who knows what happens then.

Originally Posted by krumme

http://www.hardware-infos.com/news.php?news=3681

Can we have some native german interpreters here?

German is only my third language, so bear with me. But below is what how I'd translate its contents.

The game "City of Heroes" also plays fluent, even though its using strongly reduced settings, which truly were close to the minimum. Even so, one should think that Zacate would contain a small APU, which will compete with an Intel Atom and AMD succeeded at this. One feels the way the system runs much more fluently during all applications than a Atom netbook would. This difference is also shown when StarCraft II can even be run using mediocre settings.

During my conversation with John Taylor we learnt more details and got to hold a Zacata APU in Package in BGA in hand. The package is about 1,5 cm square, the APU itself is a bit smaller then an RV810 GPU (63mm^2). Zacate listed a TDP of 18 watts and its smaller brother Ontario listed a TDP of 9 watt.

[redpriest]

Keep in mind too that Bobcat is a substantial micro-architecture change. It's about as far away from K8 as you can get.

Hi,
I'am the editor of the article from Hardware-Infos.com - So I think it'll the best if I translate it as good as well.

Originally Posted by krumme

"Auch das Spiel "City of Heroes" lief flüssig, allerdings in stark verringerten Einstellungen, welche wohl recht nahe am Minimum lagen. Allerdings muss bedacht werden, dass es sich bei Zacate lediglich um eine kleine APU handelt, welche etwa mit einem Intel Atom konkurrieren soll und dies dürfte AMD gelingen. Denn gefühlt lief das System bei allen Aufgaben wesentlich flüssiger als jedes uns bekannte Netbook auf Intel Atom-Basis, zudem verriet uns eine Firmennahe Quelle, das zum Beispiel StarCraft II auch auf mittleren Settings spielbar sein soll"

"Also the game "City of Heroes" running smooth, even though its using strongly reduced settings, probably close to the minimum. But pay attention to the fact that Zacate is only a tiny APU, which will compete with Intel's Atom. Because the system seems to work smoother in each workload (gaming, HD-playback, etc.) than any Atom-based netbook ever seen, this is likely to succeed. Additionally an AMD-closed-source told us that, as an example, also StarCraft II will running at Zacate - at least at medium settings."

I hope it's a little better to understand

[Anyone]

Thank you very much, kalizec, as native speaker of the german language I feel obliged to take over from here:

First of all, the Fusion system descripted below and shown live is only available to the press, and you will not habe the possibility to view it for yourself
[...]
We also had the possibilty to talk extensively with John Taylor, Director Fusion Marketing AMD, about future fusion products.
We are not allowed to show any pictures of the displayed system, as AMD forbid photographing for fear that people would misinterpret the voluminous size of the test system as that of a final product. The mainboard for the tiny bobcat-based chip is larger than a standard ATX mainboard
The test system contained a "Zacate" APU with two Bobcat CPU cores, a graphics unit, [...]
as well as the traditional memory controller and further I/O modules for communication with the rest of the system. The TDP of the "Zacate" module is specified by AMD as 18 Watts, and the used aluminum heatspreader (ca. 4 x 4 x 2 cm + fan) dif not even get hand-warm, after several minutes of 3-D applications and video-acceleration, we estimate the temperature to be 25-30°C.
[...]
Already translated
[...]
We could bring AMD to make a statement about the performance: the Zacate APU should be appreciably faster than an Intel Core-based Pentium dual core, but no comparison was given to the coming Intel Sandy Bridge, as AMD has Llano, their second APU ready for that. And we even could see one of these dies - actually four of them, and they look about similarly sized to Propus (169 mm²), albeit somewhat elongated, but you will have to trust the judgment of our eyes in this respect, as we were again not allowed to take any pictures.

All in all AMD seemed very convinced by its new Fusion offer, and we can share that conviction, as especially the live demo of the Zacate APU left a very good impression. Zacate and Ontario (sic) are expected zo be shipped in volume to partners in Q4, and should arrive in next Q1 as Note- and Netbooks, mini-PCs and also as Mainboards with APU for self-built systems.

[End of translation]

Looks like the "Next Big Thing", doesn't it?
Faster and less restricted than Atom, much cheaper than the more powerful competing offfers, this should take the market from tablets via notebooks to mainstream desktops.

[James]

So this was Zacate on show today or are we getting confused a bit?

If this was Zacate today, the earlier demo a few months back of AvP was of Zacate too probably? I'm really struggling to wrap my head around AvP running on a 9w chip.

On that, with double TDP, is Zacate a quad bobcat or double shaders and higher clocks?

More questions than answers now.


@ Anyone thanks for answering my questions while I was writing them.

[semiretarded]

The last line of the article...Google translate: "Zacate and Ontario to the fourth quarter to the partners in large quantities to be delivered and in the first quarter as a note and Netbooks, mini-PCs and motherboards as well, including APU for hobbyist in the shops are."

I hope this is true, unlike atom which offers no PGA/LGA variants for personal assembly. This is a nice gesture by AMD that they still care about the enthusiasts, even the low-power loving geeks.

[chipper]

Originally Posted by Anyone

as AMD has Llano, their second APU ready for that. And we even could see one of these dies - actually four of them, and they look about similarly sized to Propus (169 mm²), albeit somewhat elongated, but you will have to trust the judgment of our eyes in this respect, as we were again not allowed to take any pictures.

Thanks to Charlie's excellent photos of the Llano wafer, die counts could be read across both vertical and horizontal diameters, which made for a very accurate die size calculation of 225 mm2 for Llano.

Unless he was talking about Zacate there? But surely 169 mm2 is too big, if Ontario is only ~70mm^2 or so. I wonder if AMD plans a dual core Llano? That might be around 169 mm2...