Tablets and ultrathin laptops feature in AMD's roadmap
At its Financial Analyst Day, AMD showed off a Trinity-powered ultrathin laptop from Compal.
Would an Ultrabook by any other name be just as thin, light and power-efficient? Perhaps.
Although AMD cannot use Intel's "Ultrabook" moniker, the company has similar ambitions--it recently showed off an ultrathin laptop measuring 18mm. This Compal-built notebook is powered by AMD's next-gen Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), Trinity and is expected to cost around US$900. AMD also claims that it will have better battery life than Intel's equivalent.
Besides ultrathin laptops, AMD also has the tablet segment in its sights. More specifically, it has a new ultralow-power processor, codenamed Hondo, that is targeted at Windows 8 slates. It will have DirectX11-capable integrated graphics, though whether you can play anything more than casual games is uncertain.
Looking ahead to 2013, AMD plans to have all its APUs at 28nm. These processors will have an even more powerful graphics core that is based on the GCN (Graphics Core Next) architecture used on its newest Radeon HD 7970 desktop graphics cards. It's worth noting that Intel will release its 22nm Ivy Bridge processors this year, though we expect that AMD processors will continue to have better graphics performance than Intel's.
Despite a weak fourth quarter, AMD has seen its APU appearing in a number of mainstream laptops. Perhaps the company is counting on these same manufacturers to upgrade to the Trinity chip when it's launched in the middle of the year.
Via AnandTech
About the author
After years of reviewing the innards of PCs in his previous job, Senior Writer Vincent Chang has moved on to covering notebooks and PC systems at CNET Asia. A big reader of sci-fi and fantasy, he has accepted the inevitable and gone down the e-book route, though he's still resisting the siren call of the Kindle.
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