Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE:AMD) introduced their Richland Laptops APU processors Tuesday morning. The new processors are reported to have better performance and power compared to the Trinity APU processors of 2012.
Nearly two years ago when Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE:AMD) launched their Llano APU, it was around the same time the tech company started to use the technologies they received from their ATI acquisition back in 2006.
The Richland APUs are basically small upgrades, which use Piledriver CPU Cores instead of Graphics Core Next GPU. There are four mobile Richland APUs and they all have 35W thermal design ratings. This means that the processors will be featured in mid-range laptops, not the thin laptops.
The range comes in two dual-core parts including 1MB of Level 2 cache, A4-5150M and A6-5350m chips. The former is clocked at 2.7 GHz and 2.9 GHz. The quad-core chips received a turbo boost of 1GHz.
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE:AMD) labeled the GPU core as part of the Radeon HD 8000 series but it was confirmed that the new Richland GPU core was not built on the GCN design. Because of this, is should be labeled as part of Radeon 6000 series. AMD claims this new processor will perform just as well as the Radeon 8000 series.
Lawrence Latif in a report for The Inquirer described the new chip as, ” A4-5150M 128 GPU cores clocked at 514MHz, the A6-5350M 192 cores clocked at 533MHz and the A8-5550M and A10-5750M 256 cores clocked at 515MHz and 384 cores clocked at 593MHz, respectively. The firm has set all four GPU cores to be able to boost clock speeds up to 720MHz.”
It’s important to note that despite Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE:AMD)’s minimal upgrade, the company still put a lot of effort into creating a microcontroller in hopes to increase the efficiency between the different processor states. A microcontroller will supply data in real time to improve chip clock speeds, which is a big change from the previous educated guesses made.
