AMD’s Kabini APU should be the world’s first x86 quad-core SoC and these four Jaguar cores should provide an important step up compared to Zacate E-series Bobcat cores.

Kabini becomes very relevant when you factor in the fact that Intel won’t have a quad-core Atom before some point in 2014. AMD could clearly end up in a comfortable lead for at least a few quarters.

The new AMD essential desktop chip codenamed Kabini features AMD Turbo Core overclocking technology and DirectX 11.1 enabled Radeon 8000 series graphics. It supports DDR3 1866 and comes in the FT3 BGA package, at last in its desktop variant. Graphics wise, it is fully capable of killing any Atoms Intel could throw at it.

The chipset behind Kabini is codenamed Yangtze and we mentioned it last year. Yangtze features support for two USB 3.0 ports, along with two SATA 6Gb/s ports for modern hard drives and SSDs, as well as xHCI 1.0 and SD / SDIO 3.0 protocol for SD card support.

Both quad-core and dual-core Kabini chips can be expected to land in June, fitting 15W to 25W TDP envelopes depending on the number of cores. It is safe to assume that Jaguar cores can bring some significant speed increase over the E-series Bobcat 40nm cores and having affordable 28nm entry level parts can make AMD a lot more competitive in the latter part of 2013.

The good news for both Intel and AMD when it comes to essential desktop and notebook parts is that Windows RT will continue to lack compatibility with millions of applications written for x86 processors.