Rumor has it that AMD’s CPU and GPU “fusion” won’t happen until the second half of 2010 when the 22nm (nanometer) process will be ready for production. Intel has already shown its plans for a CPU+GPU integration in the form of having two separate dies (pieces of silicon) inside the same chip.
It feels like AMD has been talking about fusion “forever”, basically to justify the acquisition of ATI (in 2006). The word “fusion” has since been used for everything and anything at AMD, but we have yet to see an actual prototype that would lead to a better consumer experience. Intel’s current goal in integrating the chip into the CPU package aims at improving power (by reducing the total number of chips). AMD’s goal with fusion is to enable better stream computing (with homogenous multi-cores) and better graphics.
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