Getting ready for Trinity yet?

Friday notes: with VLIW4 GPU

AMD Fusion LogoWhen do you know a CPU/APU or GPU is going to be ready real soon? Check the drivers, profilers and compilers! So the latest version of AMD’s (NYSE:AMD) own CodeAnalyst for Linux starts supporting Family 15h processors.  Family 15h is more commonly known by its codename Trinity. And yes, the chip is supposed to be launched before the Edible Book Festival.

Trinity is the next APU from AMD, combining Piledriver CPU cores and VLIW4 GPU (instead of VLIW5 per Charlie), if all goes correctly, you should see AMD giving out sneak peeks and previews in CES 2012 or the Fusion 2012 Developer Summit (CES 2012), you might see a Trinity-powered PC running games too.

Of course, there are good news and bad news, the good news is support for Eyefinity through the addition of an extra display output, and higher memory speed supported, in theory should provide even better graphics performance.   The bad news is, current A1 ES has a new TDP band: 125W, the not-so-bad thing is with TurboCore 3.0, you get boosts from 300 MHz to 900 MHz depending on the CPU base clock.

The Piledriver CPU cores will bring 10-15% performance increase in the same power envelope, so it’s bdver2, something got fixed, finally. As for the GPU, it’s VLIW4, you got that right, not GCN-based as Charlie suggested in his article in August, the confusion comes from the GPU model number, which will be named Radeon HD 7000 series. Well, kind of like the IGPs in the past, eh? S|A

Update: November 4, 2011 2.30pm to include the part omitted by problems with version control.

Editor’s note: It must be nice for a writer to begin their first article by correcting Charlie. ;)

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Leo Yim

Author at SemiAccurate
Leo Yim is our correspondent from the far flung reaches of East Asia. Fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese and English he'd rather be talking about computers no matter what language. A true detail man he dreams of building gaming rigs from workstation class parts.