AMD, Samsung power next-gen Microsoft Surface

AMD announced that its Athlon II X2 embedded processor and Radeon HD 6700M Series graphics are part of the Samsung SUR40-powered Microsoft Surface emonstrated at CES 2010.

"The next generation of Microsoft Surface will continue to excite customers and partners alike, through innovation in both hardware and software," said Brad Carpenter, General Manager, Surface Engineering, Microsoft. "An important element is AMD's embedded processor and graphics technology providing great performance and stability for Surface, which recognizes fingers, hands, and objects, including more than 50 simultaneous contacts."

"AMD embedded solutions allow designers to take advantage of the industry-standard efficiencies of x86 without sacrificing performance," said Patrick Patla, corporate vice president and general manager, Server and Embedded Division, AMD. "Never has this been more apparent than with Samsung SUR40, which takes full advantage of the highly visual and interactive capabilities of AMD's current embedded processors and leading graphics. And, we expect to see a wide array of unique designs and form factors emerge as our next-generation embedded platform, the AMD G-Series based on AMD Fusion technology, comes to market."

The upcoming AMD G-Series is the world's first Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) for embedded systems and is expected to be available in Q1 of 2011. This embedded platform combines AMD's first x86 CPU core since 2003, code-named "Bobcat," with a high-performance, discrete-level AMD Radeon GPU on a single piece of silicon.