AMD Launches Third-Generation ‘Beema’ And ‘Mullins’ Tablet Chips

AMD has officially launched its third-generation chips aimed at tablets and laptops, betting on an improved user experience, as well as innovative features in areas such as security, to drive sales.

The company said its “Beema” and “Mullins” processors (officially 2014 AMD Mainstream and Low-Power Mobile APUs) offer better performance and energy efficiency than Intel’s comparable “Bay Trail” chips.

Third generation

The chips follow two generations of mobile chips that found little success in the competitive mobile device market. With the new processors, AMD has said it is not focusing on low-end tablets, but will aim for higher-end devices where the user experience is more important.

AMD is targeting both tablets and laptops with detachable screens and is focusing on Windows-based systems – it currently has no plans to add native Android support to its new products. The mobile and tablet device market is currently dominated by chips using technology licensed from UK-based ARM.

The chips offer two to four CPU cores based on the Puma+ microarchitecture, with 128 Radeon R Series GPU cores using AMD’s Graphics Core Next architecture. The result is faster performance, better image quality and lower power consumption than competing processors, with clock rates of up to 2.2GHz for Mullins and 2.5GHz for Beema, according to AMD.

AMD said its Beema APUs offer 50 percent better graphics performance than Intel’s Pentium “Haswell U” processors and three times the graphics perofrmance of the “Bay Trail M”. Mullins offers better graphics performance than the Intel Core i3, according to AMD.

High-end features

The chips also include innovative features aimed at offering a high-end user experience. They use a “platform security processor” based on ARM’s Cortex-A5 architecture, using ARM’s TrustZone security technology, to offer a more secure environment for sensitive workloads such as online payment systems.

Other features include gesture controls, facial recognition, features for improving image quality and BlueStacks software for running Android software on Windows devices.

Devices using the new processors are scheduled to begin shipping in the second half of this year.

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