AMD Silently Releases Two Ultra-Low Voltage Trinity APUs

All eyes are on the impending launch of AMD's desktop Trinity accelerated processing units (APUs), but that shouldn't be enough reason to miss out on the release of new laptop parts.

Then again, Advanced Micro Devices isn't making it easy for us. There was no press release or even a short announcement about the arrival of the A4-4355M and A8-4555M, its two newest ultra-low voltage APUs. The chips did make it on the product specifications page though, along with a new chip in the C-Series, based on the Bobcat architecture: C-70. We'll get the C-70 out of the way first. It is a rather odd piece of work, simply because there seems to be no difference between it and the C-60. The two cores run at 1/1.33 GHz, the integrated GPU (80 cores) is a 276/400 MHz part, the memory controller supports DDR3-1066, the cache memory is 1 MB and the TDP (thermal design power) is of 9W. The A8-4555M quad-core APU has 4 MB L2 cache, a speed of 1.6 GHz (2.4 GHz in Turbo Core), integrated graphics (AMD Radeon HD 7600G, 384 Cores) at 320/424 MHz and a TDP of 19W. It is the sort of chip that HP Sleekbooks and other ultrathins will appreciate.

As for the A6-4455M, it is a dual-core model with an IGP (AMD Radeon HD 7400G) of 327/424 MHz (192 cores), a clock frequency of 1.9 GHz (2.4 GHz in Turbo Core) and 1 MB of L2 cache (a bit low really). The TDP is 17W, again good for ultrahins. The next few months should see the arrival of cheaper system configurations based on these BGA package APUs. We wouldn't be surprised if a nice “war” started between them and all the pre-Haswell ultrabooks, especially since the average price of the latter will be of $750 around the holidays, not the coveted $699.

AMD Trinity APU
Image credits to AMD

Posted in: Hardware, Preview