14 DAY TRIAL // At first, we thought that Advanced Micro Devices had reserved the Trinity brand for its processors with integrated graphics circuit, but that has proven not to be the case.
It just so happens that the Trinity microprocessor architecture is spawning more than accelerated processing units (APUs).
The Trinity “core” is being used in the making of central processing units as well, belonging to two long-standing AMD series.
Much as we might wish for it, we aren't talking about the soon-to-be-extinct Phenom brand. Instead, one of the two chip lines is Athlon II, while the other is Sempron.
The "Family 15h Models 10h-1Fh AMD Sempron Processor Product Data Sheet" and "Family 15h Models 10h-1Fh AMD Athlon Processor Product Data Sheet" have the information, as discovered by CPU World.
There will be both dual-core and quad-core Sempron units (1 or 2 Piledriver modules) featuring the Trinity core, though, obviously, not the integrated graphics processor.
The L2 cache size will be of 1 MB and the highest memory frequency supported by the dual-channel Ram controller will be DDR3-1600.
The Athlon II are, as has always been the case, superior in performance, with two or four cores, 1 or 2 MB L2 memory per module (1 MB on the dual-core, 2 MB on the quad-core, meaning 4 MB L2 for the latter).
AMD's Trinity CPUs support all x86 extensions (including AES and AVX), Turbo Core 3.0 technology (dynamic overclocking according to load) and AMD-V Virtualization with nested paging.
Finally, in addition to the dual-channel memory chip, the CPUs integrate a PCI Express 2.0 controller.
People thinking of building a decent but not too expensive system may want to consider waiting until one of these chips makes it to market, whenever that is.
Then again, low-end and even mainstream chips without integrated GPUs are becoming obsolete, so it might be tricky for AMD to score customers, even if, along with its OEMs, it does mass-produce a suitably varied collection of FM2 motherboards.