AMD Desktop Trinity Delayed to October?

Considering that the wave of AMD Trinity motherboards displayed at Computex 2012 is too big to point to a CPU delay, we have difficulty in believing the rumors.

The problem is the fact that AMD might be indeed planning a short delay of its desktop Trinity APUs, but the reasons are completely different than what others are saying. Our take on this supposed delay is the fact that AMD has been really successful in ensuring design wins for its Trinity-based APUs and now fears a shortage or chips. Therefore, the Texas-based CPU designer is piling up Trinity APUs for shipments towards the mobile integrators. This may also have to do with the SOI technology. Remember that SOI might ensure an extra 10 or 15 percent frequency increase with the same amount of heat dissipation, but the really impressive results surface when the chip is being under-volted.

So, maybe AMD would rather take a Trinity APU that won’t reach 3800 MHz (and thus won’t sell for $190) and under-volt it and get a 3200 MHz mobile APU that will probably sell for more than $200. Last year, AMD’s Llano, although a great success, wasn’t so prevalent either in laptops, or inside tablets. This year however, AMD’s Trinity allows AMD to successfully provide solutions for tablets and ultrathin notebooks, and thus, the company has to supply even more APUs to satisfy more market segments.

Usually, the mobile segment is much more profitable than the desktop market and the fabless CPU company would rather ensure supply for the mobile market with increased margins than dump a lot of APUs in the desktop segment. There’s also the possibility that these are just rumors and there’s no delay at all.

Posted in: Hardware, News, Preview