AMD refreshes C-Series and E-Series APU lineups

AMD announced today three models for C-Series and E-Series lines of ultra-low power Accelerated Processing Units (APU). New processors, C-Series C-60, and E-Series E-300 and E-450, implement support for HDMI 1.4a, as well as add Turbo Core feature and support for DDR3-1333 memory on selected SKUs. Partial specifications and performance numbers can be seen on this slide:

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AMD C-Series C-60 is a dual-core ultra-low power CPU with 9 Watt TDP. The C-60 has the same stock 1 GHz CPU and 276 MHz graphics frequencies as the C-50, although those can be boosted as high as 1.33 GHz and 400 Mhz respectively. This chip comes with 1 MB L2 cache, and HD 6290 integrated graphics.

E-Series APUs have higher performance, than C-Series, albeit at the expense of higher power requirements. AMD E-450 operates at 1.65 GHz, and has on-chip Radeon HD 6320 graphics with 80 shader units. The shaders are clocked at 508 MHz, or up to 600 MHz when Turbo mode is activated. AMD E-300 runs at 1.3 GHz, and uses Radeon HD 6310 graphics with 488 MHz clock speed. Both microprocessors have two CPU cores, 1 MB L2 and fit into 18 Watt thermal envelope.

Small number of benchmarks for new models can be found in AMD C- and E-Series Update (PDF file) document. Most of the published benchmarks are related to graphics, which is the strongest side of the C- and E-Series APUs. You will also find in the document some meaningless marketing benchmarks, like resting battery life. The document provides a few interesting facts about APU families. According to AMD, they shipped more than 5 million chips in the second quarter 2011, and nearly 12 million overall. Consequentially, AMD is so bullish on APU future, that they claim that "Fusion APUs signify the biggest shift in PC technology since x86 processors were first invented more than 40 years ago":

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We hope that AMD is right, although... The first x86 processors, Intel 8088, were released in 1979, that is 32 years ago.