14 DAY TRIAL // Expected to arrive later this year, AMD's Radeon HD 7670 and HD 7650 graphics cards will use the same architecture as the company's current solutions based on the Cayman core, according to some reports that recently appeared online.
This architecture uses a VLIW4 configuration for its shader units, which combines four equally-capable stream processors, two of these being assigned with some special functions.
According to XTReview, AMD took this decision in order to enable the GPUs to work with the company's upcoming Trinity APUs in a Hybrid CrossFireX mode.
Little is known about the rest of the specifications of the Radeon HD 7670 and HD 7650 graphics cards, but the Lombok core that is used to power them is also expected to make its appearance in the notebook space.
All other solutions in the Southern Islands product family will be based on a more advanced architecture that AMD has presented at this year's Fusion developer summit.
Just a few days ago, a preliminary version of the Catalyst 11.7 driver has confirmed the code names of AMD's upcoming Radeon HD 7000 family of GPUs.
Outside of Lombok, the driver also revealed that AMD was preparing the Thames and the Tahiti cores.
The first one of these will be used to power the company's next generation of mainstream graphics cards, which includes the Radeon 7870, Radeon HD 7850 and Radeon HD 7790 models, while Tahiti will power the high-end Radeon HD 7970 and HD 7950.
A dual-GPU graphics card, based on the Tahiti core, is also expected to arrive and this is known by the code name of New Zealand.
According to the same preliminary driver, Trinity APUs will be available with at least four types of graphics in the desktop segment, and at least two in the mobile space.
Some previous rumors have suggested that the first Southern Islands GPUs will arrive in September of this year.