AMD's "Fusion" processor to merge CPU and GPU

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steve4king said:
If you are referring to the voodoo2 cards.. then no this is nothing like that.
this is taking the video processor which is normally integrated into the motherboard at the northbridge and dumping all of its processing into the same package as the main processor.

Yes, I know that. I was not referning to the physical integration, I was refering to the "branding" fusion. I was also not refering to the voodoo2 cards, but their predecessor, branded as "Fusion"


No it will not likely have anyhigh performance, but it has potential to be significantly better than current onboard graphics while taking up less space on the mobo and decreasing power.

One would certainly hope so.
 
Now here's the way for AMD to recover lost ground:

True Quad, 3.6GHz, DX10 on one chip.

My Visa card number is just itchin' to be typed into newegg for that one!!!

😀
 
One day we'll just have a PC in one huge solid block of silicon.

Like this one?

skull_02.jpg


Crystal Skulls

Supposively, they are thought to be ancient computer. :?
 
CPU and GPU Merge – Biggest Microprocessor Evolution Since x86-64, Says AMD.

Phil Hester, chief technology officer at Advanced Micro Devices, the world’s second largest maker of central processing units, said at a conference that the integration of graphics processing units (GPUs) into central processing units will allow personal computers to achieve performance of supercomputers eventually.

“Get ready for round two of the "attack of the killer micros. By combining graphics processing unit (GPU) and CPU functions in heterogeneous cores, microprocessors will bring supercomputer performance to the desktop,” said Phil Hester, in a keynote speech at the International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD) in San Jose, California, reports EETimes web-site.

The chief technologist at AMD believes that in order to achieve tremendous computing power on the desktop, central processing units (CPUs) should start utilizing heterogeneous multi-core design, where each of the cores will be able to perform certain types of tasks very rapidly. Given that theoretical peak power of modern GPUs is much higher than that of CPUs, it is natural to built in GPUs into CPUs to increase performance.

“A step increase in microprocessor performance per watt per dollar is needed. But simply adding more homogeneous CPU cores to a baseline architecture is not good enough. The solution is to adopt a heterogeneous architecture with GPU/CPU silicon-level integration,” Mr. Hester is reported to have said.

Mr. Hester also called integration of graphics processing engines into AMD’s chips as the “biggest microprocessor evolution” since the introduction of x86-64 concept back in 1999. Advanced Micro Devices proposed 64-bit extensions to x86 architecture seven years ago and has managed to transform the x86-64 technology into an industrial standard since then, which stresses how significant the idea to combine CPU and GPU is.

However, according to Mr. Hester, there are two significant design challenges in developing heterogeneous architectures (that combine CPU and GPU) – power management and memory hierarchy.