AMD has given its processor line up a significant refresh with the newly launched Trinity APU. The new processors, just like Intel's recently announced Ivy Bridge, do a lot to extend battery life, boost speed and increase graphics capabilities.

Without getting bogged down in technical details, the real juicy facts about Trinity are what it means for ultra-thin laptop fans. Not being Intel, these sleekbooks, as HP calls them, boast quad-core chips, a touted 50 per cent graphics performance boost on competition and up to 12 hours battery life when in resting state. 

AMD is claiming up to 8 hours of straight web browsing with the new Trinity APUs, a particularly impressive figure and one we will definitely be testing once we have some Trinity-toting hardware to play with. So far the only two pieces of kit Pocket-lint has seen with Trinity inside have been a Toshiba Portege Z835 laptop - which was an empty demo shell at the time - and the HP Envy sleekbook, which appeared last week in Shanghai. 

On top of the performance boost, Trinity also adds a few clever software tweaks only possible with the new processor grunt. First up is automatic image stabilisation and the ability to have multi-person HD video chat. AMD is also claiming a clever piece of tech called Quick Stream, which will divert the majority of network bandwith to video streaming, so you get smoother playback on low-speed connections. 

Something to look forward to in the future is AMD's hardware acceleration of Windows 8's Metro UI and Metro style apps. There is also out of the box Direct X 11 compatibility and instant readiness for Windows 8 on its arrival. 

Photoshop CS6 gets itself another 30+ hardware accelerated features on Trinity, as does Winzip, which allegedly performs better using the APUs. AMD is saying that Trinity will be appearing in the hardware of "leading manufacturers". So far we know HP, Samsung, Toshiba, Acer, Asus and Sony are on the cards, but expect plenty more to be joining the party. The Trinity desktop chip will be arriving in June with ultra-thins and laptops carrying it appearing in July. 

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