The AMD A8-5600K 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. A8-5600K has 4 MB of L2 cache and operates at 3.6 GHz by default, but can boost up to 3.9 GHz, depending on the workload. AMD is building the A8-5600K on a 32 nm production process using 1,303 million transistors. The silicon die of the chip is not fabricated at AMD, but at the foundry of GlobalFoundries. You may freely adjust the unlocked multiplier on A8-5600K, which simplifies overclocking greatly, as you can easily dial in any overclocking frequency.
With a TDP of 100 W, the A8-5600K consumes a good deal of power, so decent cooling is needed. 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, A8-5600K uses a PCI-Express Gen 2 connection. This processor features the Radeon HD 7560D integrated graphics solution.
Hardware virtualization is available on the A8-5600K, which greatly improves virtual machine performance. Programs using Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) will run on this processor, boosting performance for calculation-heavy applications.