AMD Is Already Testing the First Trinity APU Samples

A series of processors from AMD's upcoming Trinity APU series were just spotted online in a benchmark database suggesting that the Sunnyvale-based chip maker has already started testing these CPUs and may have even sent them to its partners.

Results of tests run using these processors were added to the OpenBenchmarking.org database and included not just the names and clock speeds of the APUs, but also information regarding their performance.

All these details however have been removed from the database by the Phoronix Test Suite author “to save these engineers on too much embarrassment or trouble.”

Despite this measure, Phoronix has however disclosed a few basic info about the chips. These are actually four in number and all are Engineering Sample processors.

The APUs include either two or four processing cores, have their clock speeds set between 2.5GHz and 3.3GHz, working integrated graphics and seem to function well under Linux with the proprietary AMD Catalyst driver.

AMD's next-generation Trinity APUs are based on the Piledriver core which is said to offer 10% better performance than Bulldozer and feature a VLIW4 GPU derived from the Cayman graphics used inside the Radeon HD 6900 series.

Much like the current Llano APUs, the chips will lack any sort of Level 3 cache memory as AMD wanted to increase the die area available to the on-board GPU.

According to AMD, Piledriver based APUs will be divided into three main versions for specific price-points and markets.

All the chips will be manufactured by Globalfoundries using the 32nm fabrication process and early estimates indicate that the quad-core version of the chip will feature more than 2 billion transistors.

The first Trinity APUs are expected to arrive at the end of Q1 2012 or in early Q2.