AMD unveils embedded products based on RV610/690G/Sparta

Thursday 24th January 2008, 12:10:00 PM, written by Arun

In the last few days, AMD has unveiled a number of products aimed at the embedded market, all of them offered through the AMD Longevity Program which offers components for up to five years. These include the RV610-based ATI Radeon E2400 with memory chips embedded on the package, the RS690-based 690E chipset and new CPUs, including the 1GHz/8W 65nm Sempron 2100+ based on AMD’s Sparta chip.

These solutions are targeted to a variety of different markets. The processors and chipset are primarily aimed at the industrial control, digital signal and point-of-sale embedded markets. The E2400, on the other hand, will be useful in display walls, patient monitoring, casino and arcade gaming, and much more.

The E2400 GPU also includes 128MB of on-package GDDR3. The reason why it’s not based on the 55nm RV620 is likely just design times, as getting products ready for that market always takes longer. Regarding the processors and chipsets, they all seem to be manufactured on advanced processes which is an obvious advantage (65nm CPUs, 80nm northbridge), which is an obvious advantage. AMD’s Sparta is also likely to be a very small chip, which means it should be cost competitive given the performance.

On the other hand, the level of integration is relatively low (discrete northbridges and southbridges) which means it’s a 3-chip solution without the E2400 and 4-chip with it. That doesn’t compare so well with VIA’s C7-based solutions which are now 2-chip and have smaller die sizes, but of course AMD’s products promise higher performance and thus they’ll definitely be very attractive for certain markets. They are actually more likely to compete head-on with VIA’s upcoming Isaiah core than C7.

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amd ± embedded, rv610, sparta

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