14 DAY TRIAL // Advanced Micro Devices may not have said much, if anything, about the Kabini accelerated processing unit during the Consumer Electronics Show (2014 Edition), but that doesn't mean information didn't come from other sources.
In fact, Micro-Star International more or less let the whole wide world know that a socketable Kabini chip was on the way.
Granted, it didn't say it, exactly, but it did bring a mini-ITX motherboard to the show, one that has a 721-pin socket ready to accept a Kabini APU.
And since Kabini APUs have, so far, been only pre-soldered chips always permanently affixed to whatever mainboard they ship with, that means a new, socketed unit is in the works.
Or maybe AMD has already completed it but it is just waiting for the right moment to unveil it.
For those who want details, the motherboard is a mini-ITX, square platform with an M1 socket. It can handle dual-core and quad-core chips of up to 25W TDP (thermal design power).
Two USB 3.0 ports are available on it, along with DVI, HDMI and Ethernet connections, plus a pair of RAM slots (DDR3 random access memory) and a PCI Express slot.
Dual SATA ports and a mini PCI Express slot (probably for mSATA SSDs) are included in the spec sheet as well.
In other words, all the bases are covered, so you'll be able to create a more than decent multimedia system, or even a gaming-capable one if you put a graphics card in that PCI Express slot.
The Kabini APU could bear the Sempron brand, or maybe the S-Series branding name instead. It can be a dual-core or quad-core APU with Radeon HD 8400 graphics, or something of similar performance.
We'll know for sure at some point in March. That's when the motherboard is supposed to hit stores, so odds are that the socketable AMD Kabini will come out around the same time, or a bit later.