Laptop Thoughts: AMD Llano (Fusion-A Series) Goes Head-to-Head With Intel Sandy Bridge

"AMD's Llano platform has been on our radar for more than two years, and finally, the company has come clean with its latest class of hybrid CPU / GPU chips, officially dubbed the Fusion A-Series. Unlike the low-power flavor of Fusion (sic) accerlated processing units already on the market, these 32-nanometer APUs were designed with desktops and mainstream laptops in mind, taking direct aim at Intel's Core 2011 processors with the promise of superior processing and discrete-level graphics, and 10-plus hours of battery life."

AMD appears to be finally ready to continue the platform wars with Intel with Llano, or Fusion-A. In fact, they are making some direct comparisons with Intel's processors, and, according to their numbers, are better, faster, and more power efficient across the board. Claims of 10-hours runtimes for batteries seem very optimistic, and, let's hope that they're close - but what is "resting battery life?" AMD uses the term "supercomputer" and "personal supercomputing" in their press release, so they're setting the bar pretty high! Fusion-A will be ultimately found in more than 150 laptops and desktops starting the second quarter of 2011. Gotta love choices!