AMD FM2+ Socket For Kaveri APU Is Backward Compatible With Trinity and Richland

It was confirmed in the latest roadmap from AMD that the company is preparing a new FM2+ socket for their upcoming Kaveri APU. A slide detailing ECS’s upcoming A78F2-Ti ITX motherboard has revealed that not only is the FM2+ socket compatible with the Kaveri APU but also offers backwards compatibility with Trinity and the recently released Richland APUs. You can see the demonstration of Kaveri APU at Computex 2013 here.

AMD FM2+ Socket For Kaveri APU Compatible With Richland and Trinity

Kaveri APU would be AMD’s fourth generation accelerated processing units platform which would be empowered by the latest 28nm Steamroller core architecture, GCN HD 8000 series graphics and AMD’s HSA/ HUMA designed architecture which would enhance the performance and efficiency of the next generation of APUs. FM2+ would be the socket needed to support these upcoming Kaveri APUs but for those who can’t afford Kaveri at the time of its launch but want to upgrade to a better motherboard with new features could buy the latest FM2+ socket boards and equip their old Trinity and Richland APUs on them since the socket is backwards compatible with the older generation APUs. This would offer longer lifetime for both Trinity and Richland APUs and we would also see new APUs based on the Richland architecture over the time after FM2+ socket boards launch.

You can see from the comparison picture posted below that both sockets aren’t entirely different from each other except one or two pins. AMD showcased both BGA and FM2+ models of their fourth generation Kaveri APUs which look alot like the current APU design. One interesting thing about the report is that the board which ECS has displayed features support for DDR3 SO-DIMMs while we heard leaks that AMD would go for DDR4 or GDDR5 with their upcoming Kaveri APUs. It could be possible that board makers won’t show reveal the DDR4 or GDDR5 compatibility details so early since the APU launches in another 6 or so months.