AMD Announces A-Series Fusion APUs: Smoother Video, DirectX 11, USB 3.0, and 10.5 hours of Endurance

AMD today announced its new line of Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), which will provide both increased graphics performance and battery life to systems running the new chip.

Code-named “Llano,” these new chips are set to appear in 150 notebooks and desktops in 2011, including HP’s Pavilion and ProBook laptops, also announced today.

According to AMD, the A-Series should deliver up to 10.5 hours of resting battery life, a more than 50 percent increase when compared to current AMD mainstream platforms. Moreover, they will have native support for DirectX 11, OpenCL and Open GL, 3D displays, as well as built-in support for USB 3.0.

The new APUs will have a new feature, called AMD Steady Video, that can smooth out jumpy videos on the fly, and can also be paired with discrete AMD GPUs, and switch between the two.

Similar to Intel’s new Core processors (and its own E- and C-Series APUs it debuted several months ag0), AMD has combined the CPU and the GPU onto a single die, making for more efficient power consumption and increased processing power.

The A-Series APU will be divided up into three segments:

The A4 Series, roughly analogous to Intel’s Core i3 processor, will be a step up from its E-Series, and aimed at budget notebooks starting around $499. The A6 Series is the mid-range processor, whose performance should compare with higher-end Core i3 and lower-end Core i5 notebooks, and will most likely show up in systems starting at $599. The A8 Series is the high-end processor, and will compete with Intel’s Core i5 and i7 chips in systems costing greater than $699.