Advanced Micro Devices has released the latest addition to its A-Series fourth-generation accelerated processing units, a chip with up to 12 cores that can be paired with the vendor’s Mantle technology for gamers.
The AMD A10-7800 accelerated processing unit (APU) is launching July 3 in Japan and will be available worldwide by the end of the month, according to AMD officials.
The 12 cores will be a combination of four CPUs and eight GPUs and will incorporate Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) features, including the sharing of memory, the ability to view the compute and graphics capabilities as a single processor, and the capability to more easily move workloads to whichever one is most needed. The APU boasts AMD’s Radeon R7 Series graphics, according to the company.
“The 2014 AMD A-Series APUs are the most advanced and developer-friendly performance APUs from AMD to date,” Bernd Lienhard, corporate vice president and general manager of AMD’s Client Business Unit, said in a statement. “The compute and graphics technologies in our APUs lead the way for consumers to leverage the best technology in their gaming, office and multimedia applications, and raise the bar on the desktop PC experience.”
The A10-7800 APU includes support for the UltraHD 4K display resolution, and also includes enhancements to its video post processing capabilities that will improve how 1080p videos look when put onto an UltraHD-enabled monitor or TV, officials said.
The chip’s thermal-design power can be configured by users to maximize performance by fine-tuning it.
AMD launched Mantle last year, with officials promising improved performance in computer games. Last month, rival Intel reportedly asked AMD about getting access to Mantle, though spokesmen for Intel told news outlets that the request for access to the technology was for what they said was an experiment, and that the chip maker was still focused on such open standards as Microsoft’s DirectX API.
Along with the A10-7800 APU, AMD also unveiled the A6-7400K and A4-7300 APUs, which are aimed at consumers looking to upgrade their PCs.