AMD's Fusion details break from containment
GPU type and process size spotted
After AMD announced plans for the CPU/GPU 'Fusion' processor on the back of its acquisition of ATI in 2006, the company has since been extremely guarded with details.
But folks at TGDaily say they've unearthed news on Fusion chips from unnamed industry sources. According to the publication, the first Fusion processor, code-named "Shrike," will consist of a dual-core Phenom CPU and ATI RV800 GPU core.
The processors are expected to debut using a 40nm process technology from TSMC.
Only basic details on the RV800 are forthcoming. It has DX10.1 compatibility and minor performance gains beyond those from shrinking the die itself.
AMD's Fusion processor is the company's answer to Intel's next-gen 'Nehalem' architecture, which similarly integrates multiple cores and a GPU on the same processor die. Fusion chips are scheduled to debut in 2009 and will likely transition to a 32nm process in early 2010. ®
COMMENTS
/yawn
Not interested in integrated nothing that gets switched off in the BIOS as soon as I install a card that does it better. In fact cache and core type are what I look at when buying.
Low power consumption is what they should be working on, I won't be impressed till I see a chip that can power itself from the heat generated by running Vista and DX10 simultaneously.
Im lost
a vector is a few triangles,
n/s bridges were on boards long before the bottleneck nforce,
old news really
AMD roadmaps ahve been showing these for almost a year, they will start with low end parts this year and high end parts starting at the end of 2009, with the best ones coming in early 2010 with the drop in process, putting a gpu on the cpu can result in massive gains in performance, as the cpu to gpu path way is direct, which is one of the bottle necks in the system today, also system memory path way is also direct as the memory controller is on the chip most likely out side the main cores so the gpu will have direct access to the memory controller, and with the memory controllers capability to address more than bank of ram, and even differnt types per bank, its possible we migth see gddr sticks available for sale seperately and motherboard with seperate banks for the system memory and graphics memory.
course most this comes from articles already written and which they themselves are speculation based on what the amd's current crop of cpus can do already, that just isnt being used except for multi proc. opteron boards.
This tech could signifigantly change pc architecture or it may flop or end up a niche market for laptops and business pc's, compatability and standards will determine its ultimate fate.
Cheap PC's....
It'll be crap for gamers, current high end graphics has about 512MB of extra fast memory on an extra wide bus. Looks like this'll use system RAM.
Microsofts next OS (Vista) still doesn't have cheap machines that can run it properly.
Businesses will eventually have to switch to it, so there is a demand for cheap as chips machines with reasonable graphics.
So, stick everything on one chip. If they could eliminate the PCI bus completely, the pin count would be even lower and the whole caboodle would fit in a nice small cheap box.
If you're making a mass produced discount system that businesses will buy by the thousand then this is the kind of stuff you want.
Hardcore gamers?
Please try to recall that there are many people who appreciate decent graphics processing, other than gamers.
Architects, graphics designers, scientists to name a few.
I thought that these next generation solutions were in part designed to do simple hand-offs to discrete solutions when more grunt is required.
A much greener solution - less silicon and manufacturing, less power required in the majority of systems, with the ability to ramp up as required. Win-win.
