AMD 2013 A & E-Series Kabini and Temash APUs

Name: AMD 2013 A & E-Series Kabini and Temash APUs
Brand: AMD

by Marco Chiappetta — Thursday, May 23, 2013, 12:01 AM EDT

The PC market is changing rapidly, as tablets and other ultra-mobile / convertible form factors continue to eat away at traditional desktop and notebook PC sales. AMD hopes that its new mobile A-Series and E-Series APUs put the company in a better position to capitalize on the myriad opportunities offered by the burgeoning ultramobile market. And in all likelihood, they have.

We all know Intel’s Haswell is due to launch soon and that it will likely offer improved performance and power efficiency over current Ivy Bridge-based products. Since Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge Core processors already offer huge performance advantages over anything AMD currently has available, Haswell will most likely continue that trend in high-performance notebooks and desktop systems. But AMD’s new products don’t necessarily target Haswell. Kabini and Temash are going after the space currently occupied by CloverTrail (i.e. Atom) and entry-level Pentium/Celeron branded products; versus these parts, AMD is in a decent position.

There's That Kabini Die Shot Again...

As was the case with the previous generation Brazos, AMD’s low-power processor cores offer competitive, or much better, performance in the entry-level mobile space. AMD’s graphics performance, however, is simply on another level. Intel has BayTrail coming down the pipeline, but it won’t hit the market for a few more months at least. AMD is ready now with a new, more power-efficient architecture than its previous gen, which improves performance across the board. If Brazos was an unmitigated success for AMD, the prospects for its 2013 mobility platforms are good considering they offer much better CPU and GPU performance, at lower power.

Of course, AMD’s success ultimately is in the hands of its OEM partners. If AMD can land some lucrative design wins, we’re sure their 2013 mobility platforms will do well. We’re aware of a few interesting products built around AMD’s latest A- and E-Series APUs due to arrive soon, but we haven’t gotten our hands on retail-ready product just yet. Hopefully we will soon, because the idea of a low-power, relatively high-performing convertible with DX11-class graphics and all-day battery life is intriguing to say the least.

Tags: AMD, GPU, CPU, processor, Fusion, APU, A-Series, Kabini, Temash

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com