Wednesday, January 11th 2012
AMD Demonstrates Trinity APU, Its Own Thunderbolt-Alternative
AMD's next-generation accelerated processing unit (APU), codenamed "Trinity", was demonstrated at CES. Trinity will make up AMD's 2012 A-Series APU lineup, and will be designed for mainstream-thru-performance notebooks, and mainstream desktops (different standards for different form-factors). Pictured below is what its notebook-specific BGA package looks like. The package has an exposed rectangular die, with a stabilizer frame around it (like with GPUs). Notebooks' cooling assembly heat pipes make direct contact with the die. Trinity packs two Piledriver modules (an evolution of Bulldozer), and DirectX 11.1 AMD Radeon HD 7000M graphics (notebook APU) or HD 7000D (desktop APU).
Shown to the CES crowd was a mind-boggling demo. The public were first shown what appeared to be an ATX desktop connected to two monitors, one monitor running a DIRT 3 DirectX 11 game demo at high-quality settings, and another screeen revealing the APU to be running GPU-accelerated video transcoding. No discrete graphics was used, it's just the embedded HD 7000 at play/work. If that alone didn't raise a few eyebrows, the AMD representative removed the lid of the ATX desktop case to which those two monitors were connected, to reveal a 14-inch laptop inside doing all the work. And there's more - the laptop's main screen wasn't idle, it was running a high-definition video playback. Whatever synthetic benchmarks end up telling about Trinity, its real world performance does impress!
You have got to watch the video after the break!
At a discrete meeting with select journalists at a backroom, AMD also talked about its competitive technology to Intel's Thunderbolt, which it's referring to as "Lightning Bolt" (+1 for originality). This interface will use the same mini-DP port design as Thunderbolt. It will have the bandwidth to drive up to four HD displays, and multiple USB 3.0 devices, and will have a hub cost of under $40.
Source:
HotHardware
Shown to the CES crowd was a mind-boggling demo. The public were first shown what appeared to be an ATX desktop connected to two monitors, one monitor running a DIRT 3 DirectX 11 game demo at high-quality settings, and another screeen revealing the APU to be running GPU-accelerated video transcoding. No discrete graphics was used, it's just the embedded HD 7000 at play/work. If that alone didn't raise a few eyebrows, the AMD representative removed the lid of the ATX desktop case to which those two monitors were connected, to reveal a 14-inch laptop inside doing all the work. And there's more - the laptop's main screen wasn't idle, it was running a high-definition video playback. Whatever synthetic benchmarks end up telling about Trinity, its real world performance does impress!
At a discrete meeting with select journalists at a backroom, AMD also talked about its competitive technology to Intel's Thunderbolt, which it's referring to as "Lightning Bolt" (+1 for originality). This interface will use the same mini-DP port design as Thunderbolt. It will have the bandwidth to drive up to four HD displays, and multiple USB 3.0 devices, and will have a hub cost of under $40.
77 Comments on AMD Demonstrates Trinity APU, Its Own Thunderbolt-Alternative
That, or they were just giving nVIDIA shit.
Either one is fine.
To put it another way....instead of gpus being 1, 1/2 and 1/4 as they were for so long, they will likely be 1, 2/3, and 1/3. 1/4 (up to maximum potential of 8 rops) of the previous gen will now be integrated into the a-series. The old minimum design (up to maximum potential of 4 rops)...bobcat.
Hope that kinda makes sense.
If this Trinity turns out to be a real jump from the Llano, I don't think a person could go wrong looking in this direction for their next ultra or notebook computer.
LC
ultrabook =exactly.
its just DisplayPort and mobile igp eyefinity at work!
Thunderbolt uses the displayport connector but different signaling, but you can use DP+Thunderbolt at the same time
It is only when you are using multiple GPUs or old game engines that consistently show BD falling behind.
Gen 3 of this APU of AMDs is going to blow our fucking mind :rockout:
almost everyone i knw wants an AMD APU laptop now.
only ones that dont want either dont knw about amd or their IQ is less than a dolphin's.
playing dirt3, encoding video and playing HD movie all at the same time. fucking brilliant.
and this wont "hang" like those intel mobile gpus i came across. seriously whats with this hanging issue of intel?
@de.das.dude well if I remember correctly dolphins are intelligent mammals, perhaps slightly inferior to orcas and on par with primates. So I am guessing that they would also choose AMD's APUs :D