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DonanimHaber has published more information on AMD's second-generation A-Series APU – Trinity. As a recap, Trinity will replace the aging CPU on Llano with Piledriver cores featuring Turbo Core 3. The VLIW-5 GPU on Llano will also give way for a VLIW-4 GPU. Trinity will be interface with the same A75 chipset as Llano but will fit into the FM2 socket.

DonanimHaber has published more information on AMD's second-generation A-Series APU – Trinity. As a recap, Trinity will replace the aging CPU on Llano with Piledriver cores featuring Turbo Core 3. The VLIW-5 GPU on Llano will also give way for a VLIW-4 GPU. Trinity will be interface with the same A75 chipset as Llano but will fit into the FM2 socket.

The CPU gets an upgrade to the latest Piledriver cores, featuring 3rd gen Turbo Core. The performance is expected to be up by 20% compared to Llano. Trinity will feature upto 2 Piledriver modules, which AMD will market as quad-core. The 2 module APU will feature a total of 4MB L2. Not surprisingly, it is hinted that the L3 will be dropped, as the L3 cache was included in Bulldozer for server applications. Like Llano, multiple GPU and asymmetric crossfire will be supported.

The GPU will also get a significant boost, moving to the VLIW-4 architecture. Estimated GPU improvement over Llano is expected to be 30%. The new UVD3 features Video Compression Engine (VCE) which is surely a response to Intel's QuickSync.

The FM2 architecture will support DDR3 RAM upto 2133 MHz. AMD Eyefinity and DisplayPort 1.2 will also be available to the APUs.

Trinity production is expected to be prepared by November, with volume production beginning in January. If all goes well, Trinity should arrive before Intel's Ivy Bridge. Overall, the Virgo platform and Trinity are expected to be fairly major upgrades over Llano. The competitive landscape is likely to remain unchanged, with quad-core Trinity competing with dual-core Ivy Bridge, while significantly outperforming in the graphics department – much like Llano vs Sandy Bridge.

Source: DonanimHaber