AMD Brazos 2.0 platform is announced

AMD yesterday announced Brazos 2.0 platform, along with E1-1200 and E2-1800 Accelerated Processing Units (APU). Details of just released processors were spotted on AMD website last weekend, therefore the announcement was not totally unexpected. Brazos 2.0 offers marginally higher level of performance, than Brazos platform, all the while improving battery life and adding support for the latest versions of USB and SATA interfaces. Mobile and low-power desktop devices, based on Brazos 2.0 platform, are expected to be available from Acer, Hewlett Packard, Lenovo, Samsung, and a few other manufacturers.

Based on public Brazos 2.0 information, E1- and E2-Series processors are not much different from previous E-Series APUs from Brazos platform. The chips still use Zacate core, and come with 2 CPU cores, each with its own 512 KB L2 cache. Like E-Series parts, the E1/E2-Series support SIMD instructions up to SSE3. The only change on the CPU part of the chip is slightly higher core frequency. The E1-1200 is clocked at 1.4 GHz as opposed to 1.3 GHz on AMD E-300, and the E2-1800 with 1.7 GHz frequency is 50 MHz faster than the E-450. Integrated Graphics Processing Unit on E1/E2-Series was upgraded to HD 7000 series: HD 7310 on E1-1200 and HD 7340 on E2-1800. The enhanced GPU boasts higher graphics frequency, although it's not obvious whether it has any other performance improvements besides higher frequency or not. In addition to CPU / GPU speed upgrades, AMD E2-1800 also supports two new video technologies. Steady Video Technology eliminates video camera shaking in recorded videos. This feature will be supported via plug-ins by all major web browsers and by VLC player. AMD Quick Stream technology improves video stream buffering, which should make playing streaming videos smoother. Both E1-1200 and E2-1800 APUs are produced in FT1 BGA package, and have 18 Watt TDP. Detailed specifications of released E1-1200 and E2-1800 products are provided further below.

Brazos 2.0 platform uses new "Hudson-3L" Fusion Controller Hub (FCH), that has several noteworthy features. The FCH now supports USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s interfaces, and can work directly with SD cards. The controller also has lower power consumption in idle mode, which explains longer resting battery life of the platform.

Model	Cores	Frequency	L2 cache	Graphics	Shader cores	GPU base/ Turbo frequency	TDP
E1-Series E1-1200	2	1.4 GHz	1 MB	HD 7310	80	500 MHz / N/A	18 Watt
E2-Series E2-1800	2	1.7 GHz	1 MB	HD 7340	80	523 MHz / 680 MHz	18 Watt