AMD launched the Sabine and Lynx platform with the Llano APU back in June, which was the first product to combine CPU, GPU and northbridge in one. Llano will get a shorter lifespan than expected since Trinity is in such good condition that a launch can happen early next year.
Trinity is the successor to Llano, which will sport two “improved” Bulldozer modules each housing two cores, or Piledriver cores. The graphics is based on the same Cayman/VLIW4 architecture found in the HD 6900 series, and will bring 50% higher GFLOPS than Llano according to AMD. The node is the same as Llano and Bulldozer that we are still waiting for, 32nm SOI/HKMG.
AMD’s Thomas Seifert has revealed that it will release the new APU “at the beginning of next year”, and not in Q2, about a year after Llano. Exactly what beginning of next year means only AMD knows, but most likely it is Q1. AMD has already revealed that Trinity will come in suits of less than half the TDP of the 35W Llano APU, that is currently the most energy efficient versions that AMD has to put in notebooks.
AMD also says that the manufacturing at GlobalFoundries is not faultfree. Bulldozer is in mass production and there are no problems in that area, but it is the much more complex circuit that is the worry at AMD.
“We have been pretty open in that we see room for improvement on the GlobalFoundries side, I think that is very much true. Performance is not where it needs to be and we are driving them very hard to where we need them to be in order to continue to grow this partnership[…]problems with more complex products, products where we have significantly more room to improve.” AMD’s CFO Thomas Seifert.
The exact reasons for launching Trinity earlier than expected was not revealed. A guess is that AMD wants to get a ride on the Ultrabook wave that should be coming in by then, or that it wants to make sure that Ivy Bridge is not left alone.
Source: BrightSideofNews
