Goes back into roadmap
We have heard that AMD brought back the A6-3500 on current roadmaps and that there will be a triple-core Llano after all.
The current roadmap shows the A6-3500. This either means that AMD decided there is a market for such APU, since it will fill the gap between the quad-core A6-3600 and the dual-core A4-3400 APU, or that the company planned the triple-core from the begining. As we wrote back then, some sources close to the company were claiming that they never saw the A6-3500 and that there is no plan to bring it to the market.
In case you missed this one, the A6-3500 is identical to the A6-3600 as it has the same GPU part, same clocks but lacks one core. It ticks at 2.1GHz (2.4GHz with Turbo Boost) has 3MB of cache, features Radeon HD 6530D GPU part with 320 stream processors and is clocked at 443MHz. It supports DDR3-1866 memory, has a 65W TDP and supports AMD's Dual Graphics and Turbo Core.
Back in July, we were surprised to hear that AMD had no plans regarding the triple-core Llano. We thought it was strange as AMD usually goes for as much chips as it can and faulty quad-core products simply become a triple-core ones. We have certainly heard about this one, saw it in some roadmaps and even seen some early samples of it.
For now, it looks like that A6-3500 will be arriving to markets sometimes during this month together with the rest of the lineup including Turbo Core enabled A8-3800, A6-3600 and the dual-core lineup. AMD was expecting the rest of the lineup to ramp up by the end of July but we are yet to see them on e-tail/retail shelves.