Wednesday, January 11th 2012
AMD Demonstrates Trinity APU, Its Own Thunderbolt-Alternative
AMD's next-generation accelerated processing unit (APU), codenamed "Trinity", was demonstrated at CES. Trinity will make up AMD's 2012 A-Series APU lineup, and will be designed for mainstream-thru-performance notebooks, and mainstream desktops (different standards for different form-factors). Pictured below is what its notebook-specific BGA package looks like. The package has an exposed rectangular die, with a stabilizer frame around it (like with GPUs). Notebooks' cooling assembly heat pipes make direct contact with the die. Trinity packs two Piledriver modules (an evolution of Bulldozer), and DirectX 11.1 AMD Radeon HD 7000M graphics (notebook APU) or HD 7000D (desktop APU).
Shown to the CES crowd was a mind-boggling demo. The public were first shown what appeared to be an ATX desktop connected to two monitors, one monitor running a DIRT 3 DirectX 11 game demo at high-quality settings, and another screeen revealing the APU to be running GPU-accelerated video transcoding. No discrete graphics was used, it's just the embedded HD 7000 at play/work. If that alone didn't raise a few eyebrows, the AMD representative removed the lid of the ATX desktop case to which those two monitors were connected, to reveal a 14-inch laptop inside doing all the work. And there's more - the laptop's main screen wasn't idle, it was running a high-definition video playback. Whatever synthetic benchmarks end up telling about Trinity, its real world performance does impress!
You have got to watch the video after the break!
At a discrete meeting with select journalists at a backroom, AMD also talked about its competitive technology to Intel's Thunderbolt, which it's referring to as "Lightning Bolt" (+1 for originality). This interface will use the same mini-DP port design as Thunderbolt. It will have the bandwidth to drive up to four HD displays, and multiple USB 3.0 devices, and will have a hub cost of under $40.
Source:
HotHardware
Shown to the CES crowd was a mind-boggling demo. The public were first shown what appeared to be an ATX desktop connected to two monitors, one monitor running a DIRT 3 DirectX 11 game demo at high-quality settings, and another screeen revealing the APU to be running GPU-accelerated video transcoding. No discrete graphics was used, it's just the embedded HD 7000 at play/work. If that alone didn't raise a few eyebrows, the AMD representative removed the lid of the ATX desktop case to which those two monitors were connected, to reveal a 14-inch laptop inside doing all the work. And there's more - the laptop's main screen wasn't idle, it was running a high-definition video playback. Whatever synthetic benchmarks end up telling about Trinity, its real world performance does impress!
At a discrete meeting with select journalists at a backroom, AMD also talked about its competitive technology to Intel's Thunderbolt, which it's referring to as "Lightning Bolt" (+1 for originality). This interface will use the same mini-DP port design as Thunderbolt. It will have the bandwidth to drive up to four HD displays, and multiple USB 3.0 devices, and will have a hub cost of under $40.
77 Comments on AMD Demonstrates Trinity APU, Its Own Thunderbolt-Alternative
Back in 2007 is when I first heard about AMD's plans to release the "Fusion" Platform . just the thought of it blew me away. A few years later when the E series came out, I was sadly disappointed. But when I bought my first laptop based on the A6-3400m I was simply stunned. Everyone underestimates the amount of power AMD managed to milk out of a skimpy 1.6ghz quad core. I am yet to run into a bottle neck that my current laptop can not overcome. Most manufacturers use very slow 5400 RPM hard drives to cut cost and reach a price point and the average user is not tech savvy enough to understand that is what is holding back the performance. Add a SSD to any Liano laptop and not only will it respond and multi task better than your typical corporate brand desktop, But it also offers a vastly superior visual performance using the integrated HD6000 series gpu. No it is not a $1,500 Gaming system but it is more than enough for the casual gamer on the go. Seeing that Trinity will be built off of a modified BD architecture ( I am guessing shared L3 cache) and also featurea new HD7xxx gpu on the die, It will officially shut Intel out of not only the budget minded laptop market but engulf the mid end gaming laptop segment. I just hope they have fixed the micro stuttering issue the A6 series had when third party manufacturers decided to corssfire the APU with a mid range discrete gpu. That will determine just how much of the mobile market AMD will dominate. Regardless, I will be buying mine as soon as they release an upper mid range model in the $600-$700 range. I am very very excited! GO AMD!
Also correct me if I am wrong, But he did not state exactly what end of the new lineup this laptop running all this fell into. If it was the entry level chip, Than it is safe to assume the upper end will perform much better. And just wait until Win8 comes out and the os can efficiently distribute load across the cores. That alone will show drastic performance gains. We are not yet able to see the true potential of this architecture.