At CES 2012, AMD demonstrated notebooks running Trinity - with heavy workloads - and high-end HD 7000M graphics featuring next-gen 28nm GPU. Performance improvements expected for mobile Trinity are upto 25% for the CPU and 50% for the GPU over equivalent mobile Llano A-Series APUs it will succeed.
The massive 50% uplift in GPU performance is in 3D Mark Vantage benchmark, while actual games may not scale as much. Trinity will also bring notable performance improvements to the desktop, though of lesser magnitude than the mobile variants - roughly 15% for the CPU, 30% for the GPU.
Trinity introduces Turbo Core 3.0 and new video capabilities - possibly including VCE (Video Compression Engine) to take on Intel QuickSync. Trinity will be available in 17W variants - directly competing with Intel's ULV products. Trinity 17W APUs will find themselves in "ultrathins" - AMD's answer to Intel's "ultrabooks". However, the key difference is lower pricing, as AMD seeks to drive ultrathins into mainstream markets. While Intel ULV parts are restricted to dual-core, AMD is bringing all four cores to 17W.
AMD's neat Trinity demonstration can be viewed at Youtube (courtesy HotHardware):
AMD is actually showing off Trinity running Dirt 3 live in DirectX 11 and converting videos using Arcsoft MediaConverter on two different monitors. While impressive as it is, AMD later reveals these two monitors are actually driven by a notebook, which itself is running a video. So that's three displays driven with three different workloads, off a single 17W APU.
Trinity features upto 2 Piledriver modules, or 4 cores, combined with a Radeon GPU rumoured to be based on the VLIW-4 architecture. Trinity is set to release in mid-2012, and will directly compete with Intel's Ivy Bridge. While Intel will continue to maintain a dominant lead in raw CPU performance, Trinity is expected maintain AMD's leadership on the GPU front.
