The AMD A8-5500 was a desktop processor with 4 cores, launched in October 2012. It is part of the A8 lineup, using the Trinity architecture with Socket FM2. A8-5500 has 4 MB of L2 cache and operates at 3.2 GHz by default, but can boost up to 3.7 GHz, depending on the workload. AMD is making the A8-5500 on a 32 nm production node using 1,303 million transistors. The silicon die of the chip is not fabricated at AMD, but at the foundry of GlobalFoundries. The multiplier is locked on A8-5500, which limits its overclocking potential.
With a TDP of 65 W, the A8-5500 consumes typical power levels for a modern PC. AMD's processor supports DDR3 memory with a dual-channel interface. The highest officially supported memory speed is 1866 MT/s, but with overclocking (and the right memory modules) you can go even higher. For communication with other components in the computer, A8-5500 uses a PCI-Express Gen 2 connection. This processor features the Radeon HD 7560D integrated graphics solution.
Hardware virtualization is available on the A8-5500, which greatly improves virtual machine performance. Programs using Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) can run on this processor, boosting performance for calculation-heavy applications.