14 DAY TRIAL // They've been a long time coming, these processors. Advanced Micro Devices has been talking about them for months, and the rumor mill has been working overtime trying to find all possible information on them, and now they are out.
We are, of course, referring to the 2013 AMD Elite Mobility APU series (codenamed Temash), the 2013 AMD Mainstream APU collection (codenamed Kabini), and the low-power 2013 AMD Elite Performance APUs (codenamed Richland).
The third category are the only real “new” arrivals, as while Richland was launched for desktops, these ones are for ultrathin notebooks.
If things go well, AMD might score some design wins for laptops as thin as Ultrabooks, but with higher performance, at least on the graphics side (39-72% better gaming performance, between 20-40 percent better visual performance).
The only reason they will never be actually called Ultrabooks is simple: Intel trademarked the term for itself and its partners.
The Mainstream Kabini APUs, meanwhile, are the “first and only quad-core x86 SoC solution for entry-level and small-form factor touch notebooks.”
Their two or four Jaguar x86 cores are combined with Graphics Core Next AMD Radeon HD 8000 Series graphics, for up to 132% better visual performance per watt than their predecessors.
25% higher power efficiency is another asset, leading to 7-11 hours of battery life.
That leaves the 28nm Elite Mobility APU collection Temash. These, too, can have four cores and Core Next AMD RadeonT HD 8000 Series graphics. They should show up in tablets of up to 13 inches next month (June 2013, at the Computex Taipei show), and throughout the rest of the year.
Their advantages over their predecessors are 172% CPU performance per watt and 212% graphics performance per watt. Battery life reaches 12 hours.
The specifications of the individual chips will come up with each product based on them that is announced. They will be part of the A Series and E Series, and should fit the reports we've been making for the past few months, which can be read here: Kabini, Temash, Richland. Below are the intro videos for them, in that order.
