17W Low-Power AMD Trinity APU for Ultrabooks Inbound

While Intel's Ivy Bridge approaches, Advanced Micro Devices readies its Trinity APU series, and there seems to be some new information on a concern regarding the latter. 

Granted, concern may be too strong a word, since this isn't about some flaw or necessary weakness, but it is close enough. 

Essentially, some people are worried that AMD's future accelerated processing units will be too power-hungry, compared to the competition. 

After all, Intel's Ivy Bridge units are built on the 22nm process technology, while the Trinity still rely on the 32nm manufacturing node. 

More than that, some were afraid that the actual performance of Trinity would be lower than that of the Llano, as absurd as it sounds. 

Fortunately, or so VR-Zone would have us think, neither of these two concerns will become reality. 

For one, the clock speed of the Trinity will be higher than that of the Llano by up to one Gigahertz, leading to 3.8 GHz clocks. 

Secondly, there will definitely be at least one quad-core APU with a power draw of just 17W, making it well suited for Ultrabooks. 

Indeed, if Advanced Micro Devices gets lucky somehow, the product type that Intel has been spending so much time and money advertising will feature quite a few AMD-based designs. Factor in the Radeon graphics that should be better than HD 4000 and we have a winner. Maybe. 

Besides this update, the report made a point of saying that, in actual game usage, Trinity APUs would increase the FPS (frames per second) rate by almost half. 

This fits with the previously-reported 56% faster Graphics and 29% better productivity. Joined by the better power management, this all makes for a potentially interesting ride. 

The Sunnyvale, California-based company is expected to launch the Trinity this spring (2012). The first ones will appear on May 15.

Posted in: Hardware, Preview