Details on Trinity - AMD's Next Gen APU
by Kristian Vättö on October 25, 2011 10:53 AM ESTDonahimHaber has leaked a slide concerning AMD's next generation APU, called Trinity. The slide does not reveal any detailed specifications, it's merely an overview of Trinity. Lets begin with a table comparing Llano and Trinity:
| Comparison of AMD's Higher-End APUs | ||
| Llano | Trinity | |
| Core | Husky | Piledriver |
| Core Count | Up to 4 | Up to 4 |
| RAM | Up to DDR3-1866 | Up to DDR3-2133 |
| GPU | AMD 6000 Series | AMD 7000 Series |
| Socket | FM1 | FM2 |
Those are the differences in a nutshell. Husky core is based on upgraded 10h microarchitecture (also known as AMD K10), the same microarchitecture that is used in Phenom II CPUs. As for Piledriver, AMD is referring to it as second generation Bulldozer core (see our Bulldozer review). Trinity will have up to four cores, just like Llano, which means up to two Piledriver modules (each Bulldozer/Piledriver module has two cores). In terms of speed, AMD is claiming up to 20% increase over Llano. Bulldozer's poor single-threaded performance might cause the performance upgrades to be limited to multithreaded tasks though, unless AMD can do magics with Piledriver (aka 2nd gen Bulldozer). RAM support is also up from DDR3-1866 to up to DDR-2133.
GPU department will also get an overhaul. We already reported that Trinity's GPU will be named as AMD 7000 Series, which suggests that it will be based on the same design as other 7000 Series GPUs (this might sound obvious, but Llano's GPU was named as 6000 Series, yet it was based on 5000 Series "Redwood" core). The leaked slide supports this since it mentions support for next generation DirectX 11, most likely DX 11.1. AMD will also compete with Intel's QuickSync by including Video Compression Engine (VCE) in Trinity. Performance increase will be around 30% compared to Llano's GPU according to AMD.
Trinity will continue to use the same chipsets as Llano. However, the socket will change to FM2, which will most likely be compatible with FM1. Another leaked slide shows that mobile Trinity's package is FS1r2, whereas Llano's is FS1. The APU after Trinity, called Kaveri, will use FS2 package. This suggests that FS1 and FS1r2, as well as FM1 and FM2, are very similar and hence backwards compatible. This has not been confirmed though.
Availability is unknown but if roadmaps are to believe, Trinity should make its first appearance in Q1'12, full availability being in Q2'12.
Source: DonahimHaber
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frozentundra123456 - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - link
I dont really understand the blame for Bulldozers power usage being laid on GF. I mean didnt they talk to each other during development?? Didnt AMD know what GF could and could not do?? Should they not have designed a chip that took into account the capabilities of GF??Since AMD has no fabs of its own, it would seem paramount that they know what GF can do and design a chip that GF can produce properly. Just seems like there is some sort of disconnect between AMD and GF. Or GF is just plain incompetent.
And to me it signals trouble for AMD if AMD/GF cannot even design and produce an effecient 32 nm chip when intel has been doing it for what, almost 2 years, and is ready to launch 22 nm.
DanNeely - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - link
They knew what GF thought it would be capable of doing (and most of the major details were locked in place several years ago). Unfortunately for AMD and for us, GF's 32nm process still has a lot of bugs to be worked out. Cumulatively these are resulting in lower than expected yields, higher than expected leakage currents, and slower than expected clock rates. The net result is that bulldozer is launching in its current underwhelming state.Roland00Address - Wednesday, October 26, 2011 - link
But you forgot one last thing, having to use a high voltage on the chip due to the low yields. A high voltage means higher power consumption.xxtypersxx - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - link
Depending on when AMD discovered they would miss IPC and clock speed targets with BD, it makes sense that they couldn't correct it within the program schedule due to the amount of design work already done. One can only hope however that when they did come to this realization, Piledriver was early enough in that they could implement the changes in that design. If Piledriver is to Bulldozer was Phenom II was to Phenom I then AMD could be in a pretty good place.The socket change is disheartening though and makes FM1 AMD's 1156. I just hope it came about as a result of adding hypertransport or something and not because Trinity draws too much power for current FM1 boards...
MySchizoBuddy - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - link
When will they we coming out with an APU for the HPC market. 10,000 APUs sound better than 10,000 CPUs and 10,000 GPUs.Hubb1e - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - link
"Bulldozer's poor single-threaded performance might cause the performance upgrades to be limited to multithreaded tasks though"Not likely. The only reason Bulldozer is able to post any gains at all is because it can run 8 threads vs 4 threads for Phenom II. The Piledriver core in Trinity can only do 4 threads vs 4 threads in Llano. It's a 2 module chip vs a 4 core chip. Either their performance preview is overstated (best case scenario vs average scenario) or they've been able to fix the major issues with Bulldozer. Then again, Llano had pretty pathetic core speed so maybe a 4.2 ghz 2 module Piledriver could come close.
One other thing that worries me about Trinity is the HUGE # of transistors in Bulldozer. If they move that over to Piledriver without optimizations then this chip could be too big even when they take out the unnecessary L3 cache. God I hope graphics can save AMD until their next architecture comes out...
basket687 - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - link
+1Even if both have similar multi threaded performance then in that case Trinty is likely to have slightly better single threaded performance than llano because of the "module" approach.
eastyy - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - link
another socket change is annoying wish the new am3+ processors the fx series had a built in apu for the same price that would have made them more attractiveformulav8 - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - link
It may be able to run on FM1 boards. It could be similar to how the old AM2 boards worked with Ph1/Ph2 but couldn't give it its full performance benefits since HTT could only run @ 1000mhz instead of 3600-4000mhz.haukionkannel - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - link
Well Llano has 4 real cores and Trinity have two 1.5 cores... And still Trinity is expected to perform better than Llano. Interesting indeed. There has to be huge ghz boost, or they is coming some serious upgrades in architecture.Has anyone seen "low" speed buldoser tested? In the beginning low speed Phenoms were reasonable in their power usage, but leaked like a hell when pushed to extreme. It would be nice to know if bulldoser in less hunry with smaller speed or not?