Posted by Courtney Howard

SUNNYVALE, Calif., 25 Jan. 2010. AMD has introduced the ATI Radeon E4690 Mobile PCI Express module (MXM) for graphics-intensive embedded systems. The MXM 3.0 specification for graphics subsystems calls for reduced power, improved cooling capability, and a lower z-height, enabling designers to create smaller, more efficient embedded systems and speed time to market.

The ATI Radeon E4690 MXM features more than triple the 3D graphics performance of previously available solutions with low CPU utilization and brilliant picture quality, says a company representative.

With its massively parallel, programmable architecture, the ATI Radeon E4690 MXM is designed for compute intensive, embedded applications such as image recognition, signal processing and surveillance, medical imaging, and more.

"The ATI Radeon E4690 MXM module is an ideal solution for our aerospace and defense customers," says a company official.

Working in collaboration with ALT Software, a supplier of 2D and 3D graphics, AMD is able to offer customers an alternative to custom programming by developing a standards-based parallel processing API, helping them to improve performance in embedded computing systems by leveraging the power of the graphics processor (GPU). For example, the GPU has become a standard hardware component in many aerospace and defense systems, making it an ideal parallel processing solution.

The ATI Radeon E4690 MXM features 512MB of on-board GDDR3 memory, 320 shader processors, a comprehensive set of display output options, and adjustable system clocks for exacting power and performance requirements.

As the industry's only embedded graphics chip to offer support for both Microsoft DirectX 10.1 and AMD's Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2), the ATI Radeon E4690 MXM enables competitive advantages for AMD's embedded customers by providing outstanding graphics support coupled with high-quality video playback performance.

Incorporating ATI PowerPlay intelligent power management technology, the ATI Radeon E4690 MXM is designed to optimize power consumption and enable exceptional performance per watt for power-sensitive embedded applications.

System designers have ultimate flexibility with a comprehensive selection of outputs including dual independent display controllers, integrated DisplayPort, integrated single and dual-link LVDS, integrated single and dual-link DVI/TMDS/HDMI, and analog outputs.

Supported by ATI Stream technology, the ATI Radeon E4690 MXM can replace numerous system hardware components (e.g. FPGAs, DSPs etc.), helping to reduce overall system power, size, and cost, adds the representative.

"As the graphics requirements for embedded systems continue to increase, AMD has armed the ATI Radeon E4690 MXM with features that are important to our customers and done so within an industry-standard specification that helps simplify design, development and market delivery," explains Richard Jaenicke, director of Embedded Discrete Graphics for AMD. "Based on the successful ATI Radeon E4690 GPU, the ready-made ATI Radeon E4690 MXM solution provides the graphics performance, energy efficiency and reliability customers need. This, coupled with the module's five year product life cycle, makes the ATI Radeon E4690 the easy answer for system designers looking to gain competitive advantage in the marketplace."

"The ATI Radeon E4690 MXM module is an ideal solution for our aerospace and defense customers," says Dan Joncas, VP sales, ALT Software. "Its parallel processing capabilities open up a whole new range of applications including video surveillance, radar processing, target acquisition and synthetic vision. This module is ideal for manufacturers of embedded systems that require high-performance computing and advanced graphics."

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