14 DAY TRIAL // AMD and ATI’s graphics processing units were well known years ago for powering mobile workstations, using the FireGL moniker. It was quite strange that AMD never made professional certified drivers for Llano, but it seems that Trinity will fix that.
When talking about mobile graphics workstations, most of professionals in the industry don’t really require the most powerful chip available, as everybody knows those are reserved for desktop and servers solutions.
A mobile graphics workstation still needs to be mobile, and thus, it cannot integrate a power gulping dual-GPU monster like AMD’s upcoming 7990.
One thing absolutely all professionals desire is stability and certification.
Therefore, the drivers that power the mobile workstations need to go through the same testing, optimizing and certification stages as all the other professional solutions.
All the testing and certifications come at a cost, but they ensure stability and perfect compatibility with professional applications such as AutoCAD, Solid Works, and Maya etc.
Once AMD builds and certifies these drivers, it will be able to sell Trinity APUs and charge extra for all the professional certifications, ensured stability and compatibility.
APUs are also open to OpenCL and other parallel processing optimizations, and if the company manages any of these, it will only make the Trinity FirePro products more popular.
AMD’s alpha drivers reportedly already include Trinity FireGL / FirePro ID strings: “% AMD9905.1%” = ati2mtag_TrinityGL, PCI VEN_1002 & DEV_9905 “% AMD9906.1%” = ati2mtag_TrinityGL, PCI VEN_1002 & DEV_9906 AMD9905.1 = “A300 series ATI FirePro (FireGL V) Graphics Adapter” AMD9906.1 = “A300 Series ATI FirePro (FireGL V) Graphics Adapter”
So, we believe we should expect professional mobile AMD FirePro workstations to be announced this autumn.
It is very likely that HP will be among the first companies to announce such devices.