AMD Reveals Ultrathin Prototype, Roadmaps
In addition to revealing its 2012 and 2013 roadmaps, AMD sported an ultrathin form factor packed with its Trinity APU.
Thursday during AMD's Financial Analysis Day, Engadget spotted an "ultrathin" ODM reference unit from Compal featuring AMD's upcoming Trinity APU. The chip was believed to be one of the lower variants -- either 17W or 25W -- housed within an 18-mm form factor. This particular model was reportedly one of many prototypes currently being shopped around to OEMs.
According to the site, the prototype featured plenty of connectivity onboard including two USB 3.0 ports, mini-DisplayPort and HDMI mounted on the left, and audio jacks, another USB port, Ethernet and power mounted along the right. AMD is looking to sell the final product at half the price of Intel's ultrabook form factor, ranging from $500 to $600 USD.
On Thursday AMD also revealed its desktop and mobile roadmaps for 2012 and 2013. Later this year AMD will replace the Bulldozer line with the 32-nm performance-driven Vishera series which will contain 4 to 8 "Piledriver" cores. Also slated for 2012 will be the mainstream 32-nm 2nd-generation A-Series APUs codenamed Trinity with 2 to 4 "Piledriver" cores and a 2nd-generation DirectX 11 GPU, and the low-power, 40-nm E-Series APUs codenamed Brazos 2.0 with 2 "Bobcat" cores and a DirectX 11-capable GPU.
On the 2012 mobile front, AMD is releasing the Trinity APUs with both standard (35W) and Low Voltage (17 to 25W) options. The E-Series APUs will be accompanied by the C-Series with power options ranging between 9 to 18W. For the tablet and fanless ultra low power sector, AMD will introduce the Z-Series APU codenamed Hondo sporting 1 to 2 x86 cores, ultra low voltage (4 to 5W) and a DirectX 11-capable GPU.
As for 2013, AMD will release the 2nd-generation 32-nm FX desktop CPUs codenamed "Vishera" on the performance front, sporting 4 to 8 "Piledriver" cores. AMD will also launch the 28-nm 3rd-generation "Kaveri" APU with 2 to 4 "Steamroller" x86 cores, a Graphics Core Next GPU and HSA application support for the mainstream sector, and the 28-nm Kabini APU with 2 to 4 "Jaguar" x86 cores and a Graphics Core Next GPU for the low-power "essential" end.
AMD's 2013 mobile assault will include the 28-nm Kaveri APU with 2 to 4 "Steamroller" x86 cores, a Graphics Core Next GPU and HSA Application support. For both the mainstream and essential markets, AMD will release the 28-nm Kabini APU with 2 to 4 "Jaguar" x86 cores and a Graphics Core Next GPU. The tablet and fanless ultra low power sector will receive the 28-nm Tamesh APU with 2 "Jaguar" x86 cores and a Graphics Core Next GPU.
In a separate slide, AMD revealed that in 2012 it will launch the discrete 28-nm Southern Islands GPU with Graphics Core Next and DirectX 11 support. Then in 2013 AMD will launch the discrete Sea Islands GPU sporting a new architecture and HSA features.
"AMD's strategy capitalizes on the convergence of technologies and devices that will define the next era of the industry," said Rory Read, president and CEO, AMD, on Thursday. "The trends around consumerization, the Cloud and convergence will only grow stronger in the coming years. AMD has a unique opportunity to take advantage of this key industry inflection point. We remain focused on continuing the work we began last year to re-position AMD. Our new strategy will help AMD embrace the shifts occurring in the industry, marrying market needs with innovative technologies and become a consistent growth engine."

On the CPU side of things windows 8 will be with us soon and i think they are hoping that they will see some big improvements in benchmarks to make up for the abysmal showing bulldozer had. Also with piledriver on its way at the end of this year lets hope they've found out what happened to all that power they promised.
As for the GPU side, they have always done well here since they acquired ATI
On the CPU side of things windows 8 will be with us soon and i think they are hoping that they will see some big improvements in benchmarks to make up for the abysmal showing bulldozer had. Also with piledriver on its way at the end of this year lets hope they've found out what happened to all that power they promised.
As for the GPU side, they have always done well here since they acquired ATI
ok.. kidding. They may very well do that, but they did say there weren't interested in the competition anymore.
I think AMD meant they had no interest in headbutting Intel over who can market the most powerful CPU.
well im just assuming but do the intel ones have real gpus or do they also use integrated? because that's one area where going amd means cheaper and less space needed. we can also assume using hdds over ssd and also intel didnt thing they would compete with amd in the untra portable, and the only thing ultras had to contend with apple that already jacks their prices so much its not hard to compete, than along come amd who are going at a far lower more competitive price.
Energy efficient general purpose cores are still important and Windows 8 will make developers see that ARM is a capable alternative to x86, which is why AMD is working on DX11+ APU's with ARM cores in place of x86.
... good point... but the software need's to get there jet... we have x64 and multi-core, but still we use 32bit single threaded applications... at least on windows platform... and i waz talking about GPU... not cpu... there can be combinations...
WinRT will allow a lot of 32-bit applications to be very streamlined. 64-bit only make sense when you need access to more memory, but ARM is 32-bit only right now and mobile-style apps are where developers are focusing their efforts now, so anything written for mobile computing will be 32-bit anyway. As far as threading, I don't agree. Any application written now with anything to do with multimedia is going to be multi-threaded, but then, more and more of those will also use GPU acceleration. WinRT also makes these resources extremely easy to access too. HTML apps will take advantage of the GPU acceleration in the new Trident HTML5 engine in Windows 8 automatically. The new C# runtime is much simpler than the older API's and DirectX API's are moving towards native-code C++. All of this means more power to developers, but not every application requires GPU acceleration. That's the reason why NVIDIA hasn't just tried to introduce a processor that runs entirely off GPU cores.
http://www.techpowerup.com/154357/ARM-Going-64-Bit-To-Compete-In-High-End-Desktop-Market.html
... there will be even ARM 64bit CPU's and we will need to address more than 3,5 Gb of ram...