AMD detailed its upcoming 2013 APU lineup at CES in Las Vegas, while offering an early look at at its Temash (Windows 8 tablets and hybrids) and Kabini (ultrathin notebooks) SoCs.
According to an AMD exec, the above-mentioned chips remain on track to be the industry’s first quad-core x86 SoCs, with both APUs scheduled to ship during the first half of 2013.
In addition to the Temash and Kabini SoCs, AMD also introduced a new APU codenamed “Richland” which is currently shipping to OEMs and offers visual performance increases ranging from more than 20 percent to up to 40 percent over the previous generation of AMD A-Series APUs.
The added horsepower will allow Richland to be bundled with new software for users, such as gesture- and facial-recognition. The 28nm Kaveri has been named as the follow-up silicon to Richland and is expected to feature heterogeneous system architecture (HSA) and ship during the latter half of 2013.
As SemiAccurate’s Thomas Ryan notes, AMD’s poster-chip for 2013 will likely be the Kabini SoC, which is the follow on to the company’s quickly aging Brazos 2.0 chip.
“After AMD cancelled Wichita and Krishna ast year things got pretty quiet on the low cost, low power APU front. But Kabini will go a long way toward reinvigorating this rather stagnant segment,” Ryan explained.
“Temash is essentially the same chip as Kabini, except that Temash is aimed at the quickly growing tablet market. Practically this means that Temash will have a lower power envelope and end up in thinner systems, but it will retain all of the goodness that comes along with having a GCN based GPU, Jaguar CPU cores, and an integrated south-bridge.”
