We already have a taste of AMD's Fusion with the current entry-level, but very capable APUs on the market. The integrated graphics solutions give netbooks a new sort of power at a price that wasn't before possible.
Now AMD hopes to apply the same kind of practice to high performance applications. Today the company confirmed that it has commenced shipments of Llano, a 32nm quad-core A-Series APU with built-in graphics that can hang with some of the discrete options available today.
Just because the chips are shipping today doesn't mean that you'll get them tomorrow. They're being sent out to OEMs right now so they can be packed in systems.
"When we say we are shipping production units of any part for the first time, the next question I inevitably get asked is how does AMD define 'production'?" wrote Phil Hughes, Senior PR Manager at AMD. "When we talk about production here at AMD, it refers to the units that will ultimately be in the systems that our OEM partners will ship to retailers or end-customers."
Hughes continued in the blog post, "Now of course, I can’t speak for exactly when each of our OEM partners will ship systems, that’s a question for them, but as our Chief Financial Officer and Interim CEO Thomas Seifert mentioned on his Webcast today, 'Customers are very excited about Llano coming to market and we will look forward to seeing our “Llano”-based systems in the market this quarter — the second quarter.'"
AMD once again highlighted its comparison with Sandy Bridge with the video below. Of course, the real test starts once we get one of these into our review team's testing lab.
