Hardware AMD previews Fusion details

Yawn!

Why are we still getting BS from the AMD Pr machine? Surely someone has seen these things working?

This whole article should have been headed "according to AMD" which means "we'll believe it when we see it"

I would put all the fanboism aside until you see a full benchtest review here first ladies.

 

as much of an amd fan i am, i feel like 2011 is going to be too late. assuming sandy bridge is released around the same time amd's new stuff, i doubt it's going to perform much better and even if it does, it can't overclock so in terms of new stuff, intel is pretty screwed. but, intel has already accomplished everything amd plans to. they might not have perfected it (i'm not sure if intel has ever perfected anything they made, i always seem to find some huge flaw) but the point is intel is so far ahead that all they have to do is spent a little time and money to tweak everything they currently have and put all of amd's work to waste. due to how old intel's stuff will be when amd's new products come in, the prices will be very comparable and if the performance is comparable then i'm not sure who is going to win.

i'd like amd to succeed but they need to hurry up, now.

 

I don't doubt this for a second, AMD probably does see the future as APU's. But for now the only ones are Ontario and Llano.
Ontario (Bobcat CPU & ? GPU = APU) for low power / low end such as nettops and netbooks.
Llano (Modified Phenom II CPU & ? GPU = APU) for mainstream, most likely notebooks and desktop equivalents.

Then you have Bulldozer architecture which is at the moment is for CPU ( with no GPU) for Servers and high end Desktop.

Further down the road I can imagine them brining APU's with a Bulldozer cores and ? GPU on one package but nothing as of yet. Apologies if my point came across forcefully.

 

I see fusion being perfect in the laptop and HTPC markets. I really hope AMD and there board partners jump on the ITX platform better than they have.

 

Are you sure that's accurate? They all use the same architecture and as far as I know the only distinguishing features between the i3/i5/i7 family are more cores, higher clock speeds and the addition of hyper threading in the i7's.

 

Still gonna keep saving for my i5 - 750.

 

Pretty disappointed if Llano is the only 'mainstream' part, it just looks too much like AMD is almost abandoning the mid-range in favour of the low-power and server markets. Hopefully as Senilex says Bulldozer will filter down into the mainstream.

 

Makes sense to concentrate on the low power and server markets initially, as there isn't any reason to upgrade from a Core 2 Quad/Duo or Phenom II at the minute - certainly for most home users/gamers.

 

There will be mainstream desktop parts of Bulldozer. Bulldozer has a "module" design where one module will contain two cores. So mainstream will most likely see dual cores (1 module) and/or quad cores (2 modules). I would imagine 8 cores (4 modules) will be reserved for high end desktop.
Mainstream APU's will be Llano. Anything above mainstream APU would not make sense as discrete graphics come into play.

 

In a lightly threaded application could one thread utilize all 8 integer pipelines or is each thread locked to 4? Any word on 6 core/12 thread CPU's?

 

I sure hope this is how it turns out. A power efficent 32nm Phenom II with a seamlessly integrated gpu, could (for the right price) really sell well in the big box electronics stores, but AMD really needs the new core design to appeal to the enthusiest crowd.

I really hope that AMD has something good to show for itself, but the fact that they aren`t really saying anything about desktop derived bulldozer cores suggestes to me two extremes: a lemon or a i7 killer.

 

Well, considering the fact that Bulldozer isn't due out until 2H/2010 and will almost certainly cost more than an i5, that's probably a good idea....

 

Well let's hope so, Intel has a tendency to become complacent very fast.

That said, and understanding that the real money is to be made with volume boxes with integrated graphics...we really couldn't care about fusion, could we?
The enthousiast pays for integrated graphics only to bypass it.

And while I hope for a good competitive AMD chip, I'm afraid on short term basis, my decision will be to buy i5 or i7

 

ya Im waiting for Bulldozer before I think about my next build.

 

Just got the pun. Bulldozer vs. Bobcat

 

The only concern I have about Bulldozer is if it can surpass the i7 in single threaded performance. You can multiply the cores all you want but if each core is still slow then you aren't really getting anywhere. Seeing that AMD has implemented macro-ops like i7 and has much improved prefetching like i7 I am guessing that single thread performance will be pretty close to i7. I think AMD needs more than matching performance, they need to surpass it. Hopefully AMD can keep prices low and lure people back.

 

I ho

 

I hope Bulldozer turns out well, so due to competition i7's & Bulldozer will lowering the price of each other. When there out I'll upgrade my athlon machine.