AMDs Yangtze Brings xHCI 1.0 and SD/SDIO 3.0 Support

AMD is in no hurry to upgrade its Brazos 2.0 nettop and netbook platform as Intel’s own Atom is very much behind in performance and manufacturing technology. The A68 chipset has brought USB 3.0 support, but the company is working hard on the new Jaguar APU and the Yangtze FCH.

The company is taking the tablet market very serious and considering that the tablet sales in the following years will be much more than all the global PC sales from 2012, all the work for the Jaguar APU and the supporting platform is very important for AM D’s future.

For energy efficient platforms, low power consumption and features integration are probably the most important aspects.

Therefore the Yangtze FCH doesn’t bring extraordinary performance features, but rather brings increased feature integration and a much needed power efficiency.

Tablet specific functions like the xHCI 1.0 and SD/SDIO 3.0 support will reportedly come inside AMD’s new chipset and the 7.8 watts TDP AMD’s Bolton dissipates will likely be reduced in the Yangtze chipset.

The xHCI 1.0 is a different way of managing the USB devices connected to the chipset and the SD/SDIO 3.0 support means that there will be no need for an additional SD Card reading controller to be added to the platform.

AMD’s Jaguar APU will likely use a more powerful or rather more advanced iGPU than the Richland desktop APU.

Both will come with Steamroller x86 cores that are said to be 15% better than Piledriver, but considering that the desktop domain is not the main issue for AMD right now, the new chipsets will be just as interesting and innovative as the new APUs.

AMD is leaving the FM2 and AM3+ desktop platforms stay alive and largely unmodified until next summer, but then new chipsets are likely to come to the market together with the Steamroller upgrade.