AMD brings Piledriver to embedded applications with R-Series APUs

Chipmaker AMD has announced a new family of Fusion accelerated processing units (APUs) combining its new Piledriver core with GPU hardware to target embedded applications that need to strike a balance between performance and power consumption.

AMD already has a line of APUs for embedded devices and applications, the Embedded G-series which it introduced last year. Now, the Embedded R-Series adds to the mix the new Piledriver CPU core, which debuted in the company's A-series chips for laptops last week.

While the G-Series meets the needs of very low power applications with power envelopes ranging from 5.5W to 18W, the new R-Series represents a step up in performance but fits into a slightly higher power envelope of 17W up to 35W, AMD said.

It is designed to target graphics-intensive applications such as digital signage, point-of-sale systems and kiosks, as well as medical imaging and security and surveillance, according to the firm.

"With the AMD Embedded R-Series, we are taking our APU technology to the next level," said AMD's director of embedded solutions, Buddy Broeker.

"By leveraging its seamlessly integrated heterogeneous system architecture, developers can tap into a high-performance and efficient parallel processing engine to accelerate their graphics and compute-intensive applications, all while using industry-standard libraries such as OpenCL and DirectCompute."

The new Embedded R-Series combine two or four Piledriver CPU cores alongside AMD's Radeon 7000 GPU cores, and are capable of driving up to four separate displays without any extra components, or as many as 10 if the chip is combined with a discrete AMD Radeon accelerator chip.