AMD A-Series Notebook Platform

In September 2009, AMD launched VISION, designed to enable a more visual, superior PC user experience and to help consumers more easily find a PC to match their needs. In December of 2009, AMD pointed to the 20 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute2 as evidence of this usage trend. Today, less than one and a half years later, that number has increased to 35 hours uploaded every minute with a stunning total of more than 13 million hours of video uploaded during 2010!3 The average PC users’ demands have moved well beyond simple business applications and are now focused on richer entertainment with more HD and lifelike gaming and the trend is continuing.


Responding to this market demand, AMD developed the A-Series Notebook Platform, designed to meet the needs of today’s PC user. With up to four 32nm “Stars” cores and up to 400 Radeon™ cores, the AMD A-Series APU offers the CPU performance of the former AMD Phenom™ II Mobile Processor combined with true AMD Radeon™ discrete-class graphics on-die. In fact, our entry AMD A-Series APU provides more graphics power than many of our discrete cards, providing true discrete-class graphics for an outstanding visual experience.


The performance of the AMD A-Series APU is supported in the platform by the A60M or the A70M AMD Fusion Controller Hub (FCH). Both the A60M and A70M FCH provide SATA 3.0 (6 Gbit/s) capability for blazing fast hard disk drive speed and optical disk drive performance, four (4) PCIe 2.0 capable x1 GPPs for responsive peripheral components, HD Audio support, with the A70M supporting up to four (4) super speed USB 3.0 ports for the ultimate in connectivity.
The A-Series Platform, in addition to the already powerful on-die discrete-class graphics, supports AMD Dual Graphics with select combinations of A-Series APUs plus AMD Radeon™ HD 6400M, HD 6600M and HD 6700M Series Graphics, with recommended configurations of A6 and A8 Series APUs. Only AMD has the technology to provide additive graphics capabilities when adding a discrete GPU to an existing APU.


The A4-Series Notebook APU gives the digital hobbyist the ability to enjoy smooth HD and Blu-ray video with discrete-class graphics. The A6-Series Notebook APU accelerates digital content creation with OpenCL-enabled applications and enables performance gaming. The A8-Series Notebook APU provides the ultimate mobile digital creativity and enthusiast-class 3D gaming. With all models boasting AMD AllDay™ power, the AMD A-Series platform has the solution to allow you to enjoy it longer whatever your digital lifestyle.


The AMD A-Series Mobile Platform will be available from leading OEMs and easily identifiable as VISION Technology, i.e as VISION A4, VISION A6 or VISION A8. Our goal is to help consumers enjoy tomorrow’s visual experience today.

Comparative Proof Points




The AMD A-Series mobile platform provides a number of advancements over previous generation AMD hardware and displays a number of competitive advantages over competing products. This section summarizes some of those advantages with additional examples provided in the Sample Test Results section.


AMD AllDay™ Power – Power Optimizations


The power optimizations introduced with the AMD A-Series APU have enabled new levels of battery life to the mainstream notebook market. Manufactured on a 32 nm high-K metal gate process, it includes features like CC6 per core power gating and advanced AMD Turbo Core technology. AMD has achieved greater than 10 hours battery life in Windows Idle.4 In testing, a 2011 AMD VISION A8-based PC outlasted an Intel i3 system by 9% in Windows® idle testing and 29% while running 3DMark® 06.5

Brilliant HD - Improved Image Quality


The graphics power included in the discrete-class DirectX® 11 graphics of the AMD A-Series APU enables richer, more vibrant colors on streaming and HD video. As an example, a 2011 VISION A6-based PC will provide a 37% better visual experience than with a 2010 VISION Premium-based PC.6 A 2011 VISION A4-based system showed up to a 74% better visual experience than a comparable Intel Core i3-based PC.7 This is achieved with AMD’s leading image post processing capabilities and we’re also introducing new image stabilization technologies.


Brilliant HD - Improved Gaming Performance


Gaming performance is brought to new levels with the AMD A-Series mobile APU. Performance improvements over the previous generation allow gamers on the go to play titles that would not have been previously possible. As an example, you can experience up to 179% faster gaming with a 2011 VISION A6-based PC over an AMD VISION 2010 Premium-based platform in F1 2011 bringing frame rates from 13 to 35 FPS.8 A 2011 VISION A4-based PC manages to outpace an Intel Core i3-based PC by up to an amazing 279% playing Left4Dead 2.9


Personal Supercomputing – Greater Compute Power


The AMD A-Series notebook APU supports the latest GPU compute standards including OpenCL™ and DirectX® 11 DirectCompute. AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) technology (GPGPU) is one of the most exciting areas of software development and enables developers to utilize the up to 400 AMD Radeon™ Cores of the AMD A-Series for highly parallel processing. This can be used to accelerate everything from artificial intelligence (AI) in games to facial recognition in photo and video editing applications.