While AMD doesn’t talk much about the accelerated processing unit known as G-Series which they released in the middle of 2012, they are still working on it and they’ve proven that they’re serious about this product, launching a new small motherboard, which is called Gizmo. The motherboard was released through GizmoSphere, which is an open source company that does embedded system development. AMD has decided to use this company for the G-Series chip.
A few days ago AMD announced that they would change the way they spend their money when it comes to R&D, the decision being that they would focus more on mobile and embedded products.
Their first attempt at getting into the embedded market was in 2012, with the G-Series chip, but the product didn’t impress as much as they had hoped.
AMD seems to say here that they are not necessarily interested in promoting their brand. They’d rather see the chips they create get used in new devices and this is what they managed to do here. Even though this motherboard is a small one, it’s still the first device to use the G-Series chip.
Gizmo is the name of this board and it’s quite small, measuring only 101 by 101 mm (4×4 inches). While the surface area available is quite small, the motherboard manages to fit two 1 GHz x86 Bobcat cores, plus a graphics chip Radeon HD6250, plus a number of interfaces.
There are quite a few connectors available, especially since the size is so small. You have connectors here for media servers, digital signage, thin clients, casino gaming, industrial systems, IP-TV and set top boxes.
The motherboard is shipped by GizmoSphere together with a dev kit which can be used for Windows, Linux, Google Android and RTOSes. You can get it from them for just $199.
AMD claims that this small motherboard is a great choice for embedded system development and that the community will be able to use it with ease. Apparently, it’s quite useful if you’re looking to harness the heterogeneous architecture, in order to incorporate some advanced capabilities. They also say that the developers that want a x86 board that is full I/O featured and high performance will love Gizmo and what it has to offer.
We’re hoping that Gizmo will indeed prove to be as useful as AMD claims that it will be. If you’ve had any experience with it, leave a comment below.
