AMD has officially announced its Z-60 Hondo accelerated processing unit (APU), that is basically an x86 chip created for smaller form factor PCs, including tablets that are about 10 mm thin. This is a low power APU, with support for Windows 8 and also compatibility with Windows 7 and legacy Microsoft apps.
The AMD Z-60 is created to enhanced the tablet experience and comes with the Start Now technology, that offers fast boot and resume from sleep times, with up to 8 hours of battery life available when web browsing. Also, it gives you about 6 hours of HD video playback, according to AMD spokesperson Steve Belt. The Z-60 also comes with AMD Radeon graphics, HDMI output and other specs include: 80 Radeon cores, AMD Radeon HD 6250, 4.5 TDP, 2 CPU cores, 1 GHz clock speed and USB 3.0 support.
The first slates with this chipset will debut this year with Windows 8 on October 26th. The success of the AMD Z-60 APU depends on two important factors. The first of them is how the tablets powered by the chip compare against devices with Clover Trail CPUs and the second is the pricing, especially compared to the Windows RT ARM units, with better battery lives as well.
