AMD launches second generation APUs, calls them Trinity

AMD has launched its direct competitor to Intel’s Ivy Bridge platform, which it calls Trinity. The new AMD Trinity APUs combine AMD’s Piledriver platform with the Radeon 7000 series of graphics, which coverts to an 29 percent CPU performance boost and 56 percent GPU performance boost over the previous generation Llano platform.
These new chips are geared towards ultra thin laptops in the vain of Intel’s ultrabooks, but newer models for standard notebooks have also been introduced. Having said that, these chips are actually slightly larger than the previous generation Llano chips and are built on a 32nm process. In comparison, Intel’s Ivy bridge chipset is built on a 22nm process. In spite of the larger die, AMD claims these chips can provide up to 12 hours of battery life which will be very impressive, if proven to be true in real world usage.
AMD has ramped up its automatic over-clocking solution which it calls Turbo Core. Turbo Core 3.0 can pump up the CPU clock speed when there is a bit of thermal leeway, similar to Intel’s Ivy Bridge.
In terms of graphical performance, it is a well known fact that AMD holds the edge over Intel. To further this edge, AMD has armed the Trinity APU to the teeth with a number of in-house media centric technologies. AMD calls the sum of these features the AMD HD Media Acceleration suite.

• AMD Perfect Picture HD – It is an image, video processing and display technology that automatically makes images and video better with color vibrancy adjustments, edge enhancement, noise reduction and dynamic contrast fixes. All this will, however come at the cost of battery life, but the dip in battery life should be quite minimal.
• 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. This feature was previously seen in the Llano based chipset.
• 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.
• AMD Eyefinity Technology – Eyefinity technology has been seen before in AMD GPUs, but for the first time this technology has come to an APU. With Eyefinity, now ultrabook like laptops will be able support multiple displays (Three in total, excluding the laptop display) without the need for a dedicated GPU.

At the end of the day, the Trinity based chipsets look quite promising and now that HP has also announced its SleekBooks, which will also be based on AMD silicon, we can expect more companies to join the bandwagon.
However, it remains to be seen how the Trinity chipset fares in comparison to Intel’s Ivy Bridge architecture in terms of pure CPU performance and battery life considering it is built on an inferior 32nm process. This, in our opinion will eventually be a deciding factor in the success or failure of AMD’s Trinity platform.
For AMD’s sake the Trinity chip needs be as awesome as Trinity from the Matrix as the company cannot afford another debacle like BullDozer platform. AMD is yet to announce prices for these new chips but its pretty safe to say that they will be priced a shade below Intel’s Ivy Bridge based CPUs.