AMD announces Trinity APUs for Ultrathin notebooks

AMD today announced the launch of its widely anticipated 2nd-Generation AMD A-Series Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) for mainstream and ultrathin notebooks, All-in-One and traditional desktops, home theater PCs and embedded designs. The 2nd-Generation A-Series APU, codenamed “Trinity”, is a grounds-up improved design over the previous generation, which offers double the performance per watt of the previous generation. The AMD HD Media Accelerator with a unique set of technologies is designed to optimize video quality available with premium and Internet video content, and accelerate video file conversion. These new chips will feature in upcoming products from Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba.

AMD Trinity APU

The Trinity APUs provide an increase in CPU performance of upto 29 percent with higher processor speeds, thanks to the next-generation AMD “Piledriver” CPU core with 3rd generation AMD Turbo Core technology, where power is dynamically shifted between the CPU and GPU depending on application needs, effectively providing a more responsive experience that can boost CPU frequencies to upto 3.2 GHz. You also get AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series graphics for an increase of graphics performance upto 56 percent over the previous generation. Battery life has also improved and you can now expect up to 12 hours through CPU and GPU power. This makes AMD an industry leader in notebook battery-life performance. New features include AMD Start Now, which resumes the computer from sleep mode in as little as two seconds and boots to the desktop in as few as 10 seconds.

Some new features in the GPU include:

• AMD Perfect Picture HD – An image, video processing and display technology that automatically makes images and video better with colour vibrancy adjustments, edge enhancement, noise reduction and dynamic contrast fixes.
• AMD Steady Video Technology – A technology that enables smooth playback of jittery video content with a single button click, thanks to plug-ins for popular Web browsers and multimedia applications.
• AMD Quick Stream Technology – A new technology that prioritizes video streaming on PC systems for a smooth, virtually uninterrupted video stream.
• True HD video chat with up to four people at once.
• AMD Video Converter – A video compression engine for fast conversion and sharing of media files across multiple formats and devices.
• Full decode support - for H.264, MPEG-2, VC-1, MVC, DivX and WMV.

You can expect to see the following APUs in Ultrathins and All-in-one PCs in the coming month.

The first batch of Trinity APUs

The 2nd-Generation AMD A-Series APU builds on AMD’s legacy of gaming leadership with an increase in graphics performance of up to 56 precent over the previous generation and support for:

• AMD Eyefinity Technology – For the first time, this immersive technology is available from an APU without the need for a discrete graphics card.
• DirectX 11 graphics architecture and 1080p gaming
•  AMD Radeon dual graphics support that delivers a performance boost of up to 75 percent when adding a discrete graphics card to the APU. The AMD Radeon dual graphics option also offers support for DirectX 9 for older game titles, and uses new AMD CrossFire Technology Profiles for easier updates.