Published in PC Hardware

AMD 28nm APUs officially only in 2013

by on06 February 2012



Krishna 28nm replaced by 40nm Brazos 2.0


As we reported some time ago here, AMD's first 28nm APUs, scheduled to appear in 2012, have all been canceled. AMD has rolled out new roadmap for 2012 and 2013 and it clearly replaced Krishna 28nm low power APUs with Brazos 2.0.

The reason behind cancelation is the fact that Globalfoundries will be able to ramp up its 28nm production only later this year, and AMD felt that it might be too late for this 28nm architecture. We cannot exclude any design issues either, as AMD had quite a few canceled and delayed chips over the last few development cycles.

Brazos 2.0 is a 40nm chip that is about to take on 32nm Atom chips, and this is not the fight AMD would like to be in, they have to as they have no alternative. It doesn’t look that this is a decision AMD took lightly, but it was necessary nonetheless.

Deccan platform and Krishna would not get ready until late 2012, and that was too late AMD.  The chips would have a relatively short shelf life and AMD obviously came to the conclusion that they would not make much financial sense. Therefore AMD has decided to skip the first generation 28nm APUs in 2012 and replace them with Brazos 2.0 that brings turbo dynamic overclocking and USB 3.0 to this inexpensive platform.

Only in 2012 Brazos 2.0 gets replaced by 28nm based Kabini, a second generation low power APU based on the Jaguar core, with HSA.

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