AMD quad-core tablet APUs revealed at CES

AMD has announced several new mobile APUs designed for tablets and ultra-thin laptops, with both on show here at CES to give us an idea of what to expect from the company and its partners in 2013. The big news comes from the joint announcement of Temash and Kabini – each one will launch as a “world’s first” quad-core x86 system-on-chip (SoC) and represent significant upgrades over the previous generation.

Kabini will replace the current A-series and E-Series APUs, with up to 50% performance improvements, a lower 9-15w TDP o 10 hours of battery life. Launching as the A6-5200 this quarter, the chip will include Radeon HD 8400-level graphics and will be used for ultra-thin laptops, with the intention of competing with Intel’s Ultrabook platform.

Temash, meanwhile, will replace the existing Z-series APU and target Windows-powered tablets. Built on a 28nm process and promising double the performance of the current Hondo Z-60, it will launch first as the A6-1450 running at 1Ghz with Radeon HD 8280 graphics – this should allow for moderate gaming on tablets.

To demonstrate the new tech, AMD had several Wistron-manufactured reference tablets playing Dirt Showdown at Full 1080p. Admittedly frame rates appeared to be somewhere in the mid-teens, but with many Windows tablets using lower resolutions and some willingness to tweak detail settings, you should be able to get playable frame rates in most games.

Temash is expected to launch as early as April to manufacturers, meaning we should see the first tablets running the APUs by the end of the year.