14 DAY TRIAL // AMD is seeking to advance its lead in APU design and has decided to move the launch of the first chips based on the next-generation Trinity architecture to Q1 of 2012, a full quarter before when everybody expected these processors to arrive.
The information was made official by Thomas Seifert, CFO and former interim CEO of AMD, which spoke at the Deutsche Bank Technology Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.
According to the Bright Side of News website, during its presentation, Seifert said that the follow-up to the AMD's current A-series APU, also known as Trinity, will launch "at the beginning of next year."
A firm release date wasn't announced, but the launch could be scheduled for CES 2012, which will take place between 10 and 13 of January.
Just the other week, AMD showcased a notebook powered by a Trinity APU that was running the Deus Ex game.
AMD's next-generation APU combines either two or four processing cores based on the Bulldozer architecture with a VLIW4 GPU derived from the Cayman graphics used inside the Radeon HD 6900 series.
The computing cores will go by the odd name of Piledriver and, much like the current Llano APUs, 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.
Trinity will be the most powerful of these and will cover the performance segment of the APU line, which is now occupied by Llano A8 parts.
Right under Trinity will come Weatherford, which covers the upper-mainstream segment and replaces the Llano based A6-series, while the least powerful of the new Piledriver APUs will be called Richland.
This will target the lower-mainstream market segment and is meant to replace the current dual-core A4-series APUs.