AMD introduces FirePro A300 and A320 APUs

This week AMD launched first Accelerated Processing Units (APU), aimed at entry-level graphics workstations. Built on the latest AMD "Piledriver" microarchitecture, new FirePro A300 and A320 products integrate Graphics Processing Unit, which is capable to power CAD, modeling, and media and entertainment applications. The A300-series APUs can be used along with standalone FirePro graphics cards to improve GPGPU performance of non-graphics applications. The APUs work with AMD Catalyst Pro software, and they are certified to work with variety of professional programs. The FirePro A300-series microprocessors will be available in OEM systems in August 2012. Prices of A300 and A320 APUs were not disclosed by the company.

The introduction of new workstation chips was unexpected, however they are not completely new. The A300 and A320 APUs are exact clones of A10-5700 and A10-5800K desktop parts, and they come with identical features. A300-series "Trinity" APUs include 4 CPU cores, 4 MB L2 cache, a DDR3 memory controller and a graphics unit. The A300 runs at 3.4 GHz, and can operate up to 4 GHz when half of the cores are idle. The A320 is clocked at 3.8 GHz, and up to 4.2 GHz. Like the A10-A5800K, AMD A320 has unlocked clock multiplier. Integrated memory controller on new models supports DDR3-1866 memory. On-chip GPU has 384 stream cores, and runs at 760 MHz on the A300, and at 800 MHz on the A320 APUs. The FirePro processors can use both CPU and GPU portions of the chip for highly-threaded calculations. Theoretical single precision performance of the A300 and A320 products is 693 GFLOPs and 736 GFLOPs, and double precision performance is 173 GFLOPs and 184 GFLOPs respectively. The FirePro accelerated units are compatible with socket FM2. Just released chips are not the first Piledriver desktop products, as AMD already launched non-"K" A8 and A10-Series parts in OEM systems more than a month ago.