APU (Accelerated Processing Unit)

An APU combines processor and graphics on a single package sharing system memory, which is what makes a PC handheld possible at all. AMD’s handheld APUs (the Steam Deck’s custom part, the Z1 and Z1 Extreme, and Ryzen AI / Strix-class chips) dominate the category. Because handheld gaming is overwhelmingly GPU-bound, the graphics half — its compute-unit count — usually matters more than clock speed, which is exactly why a cut-down APU can trail a full one by a lot in real games.