Next two months are going to be very exciting for computer enthusiasts as both AMD and Intel will be launching several new desktop and mobile platforms. Intel will announce new Ivy Bridge microarchitecture at the end of April, and AMD will introduce "Trinity" microprocessors with "Piledriver" core. Announcement dates for these platforms were revealed in the past few days by Chinese VR-Zone and SWEClockers news sites.
We previously reported that Intel's Ivy Bridge microarchitecture will be announced between April 22 and 28, and the first quad-core Ivy Bridge CPUs will be for sale from April 29. New architecture is supposed to improve CPU raw performance by small margin, provide big performance boost to on-chip graphics, and significantly reduce power consumption. According to Chinese VR-Zone, the micro-architecture will be announced on April 23. It is not evident from their story whether there are any changes to April 29 processor availability date or not. Their list of upcoming SKUs does not include energy-efficient Core i5-3550S, and low-power i5-3570T and i7-3770T models. Also, their prices are lower by $2 - $12 than we previously reported, and we do not know whether these prices are official or regional.
AMD "Trinity" Accelerated Processing Units (APU) were expected in the second quarter 2012. These chips will introduce "Piledriver" CPU cores, and will feature slightly faster CPU performance than Bulldozer-based APUs, as well as greatly improved graphics core. The processors will run at considerably higher frequencies than current generation of "Llano" APUs, although that doesn't mean that they will be much faster than current APUs in non-graphics applications. According to SWEClockers, desktop and mobile "Trinity" CPUs will be launched on May 15, and low-power mobile APUs for thin and light notebooks will be available in June.
Sources: CPU World, Chinese VR-Zone, SWEClockers
Tags: intel, ivy bridge, cpu, amd, microprocessor
