The AMD PRO A12-8870 is a desktop processor with 4 cores, launched in October 2016. It is part of the A12 lineup, using the Carrizo architecture with Socket AM4. PRO A12-8870 has 2 MB of L2 cache and operates at 3.7 GHz by default, but can boost up to 4.2 GHz, depending on the workload. AMD is building the PRO A12-8870 on a 28 nm production process using 3,100 million transistors. The silicon die of the chip is not fabricated at AMD, but at the foundry of GlobalFoundries. The multiplier is locked on PRO A12-8870, which limits its overclocking capabilities.
With a TDP of 65 W, the PRO A12-8870 consumes typical power levels for a modern PC. AMD's processor supports DDR4 memory with a dual-channel interface. The highest officially supported memory speed is 2400 MT/s, but with overclocking (and the right memory modules) you can go even higher. For communication with other components in the machine, PRO A12-8870 uses a PCI-Express Gen 3 connection. This processor features the Radeon R7 integrated graphics solution.
Hardware virtualization is available on the PRO A12-8870, which greatly improves virtual machine performance. Programs using Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) will run on this processor, boosting performance for calculation-heavy applications. Besides AVX, AMD is including the newer AVX2 standard, too, but not AVX-512.