News AMD unites CPU and GPU development teams

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2009/05/07/amd-unites-cpu-and-gpu-development-teams/1

AMD reveals that its CPU and GPU teams will now be united in a single product group, focusing on CPUs with integrated graphics.

 

Fusion baby.

 

I have an ATI Radeon HD 4870x2. Riddle me this, how can you possible put that on a motherboard?!
If it is doable, do it, if not, I am happy to buy gpu and cpu separately.
I daresay that the integrated CPU/GPU will be for the low-end casual gamer while the Big Boys will still be taking the separate cpu from gpu approach. I cant see how they would cool such a beast, if it was a high-end solution.

S*D

 

I think they are bang on the money here.

Knowing how long it takes to develop discrete graphics cards (or any other form of high-end chip), i think we can safely assume that the HD 6xxx series is already on the drawingboard. after that, i think that miniturisation has come to a point where integrating CPU and GPU will offer vast advantages as opposed to building the two separately. I think that by the time the first CPU/GPU unit from AMD hits the market, they'll have built a complete high-end PC on an mATX sized piece of silicon.

 

Folks in the 70s: A seperate controller for graphics?! Surely there will never be a need for such a thing!

 

Of course it's just integrated. Fusion will be the equivalent of 780G, just on the CPU instead.

Ssh, don't let the marketing people hear you, though. TEH FOOTOOR IS FUUSHUN!

 

in the first many years we will properly only see these in labtops or PC's for buisnesses.

 

Awesome news! I have two rigs... This could put some interesting stuff in their future devolpment

 

Think of this... a GPU on CPU that works in WDDM (Windows) but in games, you can switch to dedicated graphics... that's the idea. Now, since the CPU is properly cooled, compared to the northbridge which most of them are passively cooled... a GPU could yield better performance in HD decoding and GPGPU applications, not to mention that powering off the discrete GPU could allow for overall lower power usage.

This could also free the chipset development for not needing to make separate IGPs also, just standalone chipsets. This would be beneficial on mobile platforms and also on servers.

Besides, it's inevitable... Intel markets Westmere as a CPU-GPU multi packaging solution so people will follow and demand the same thing from AMD, even though AMD's should perform better at a lower power draw... based on the 780G/790GX TDP of 11W compared to IGP's from Intel of 28W.

 

What would be good would be a motherboard with a socket for the cpu and a socket for the GPU then you have scale of GPU's as well as CPU's and you just throw in what ever GPU you fancy .....

 

Why stop there, you could put the GPU with it's own dedicated ram on it's own board and plug it in to a slot... oh wait...

 

this isnt anything really new, I mean in a way this old news, everyone knew this is what AMD was heading for to begin with but nice to see them cracking down and really pushing forward with it .

 

That was before their stocks degraded to the current levels... and as the articles says, "AMD is now focusing its efforts on developing CPUs with integrated graphics, which was the original goal of the Fusion project before it got hijacked by the marketing guys.". They turned FUSION into some application suite that optimizes current gen AMD platform for games... when in fact it's this.

 

Granted, in the early stages after (if?) this happens it'll be low end graphics... business/granny checking emails ect.

But whats to stop them from, say, dropping 2 cores from a quad and replacing them with 2 graphics cores as the tech develops? Heat will surely be an issue, but this would likely be an enthusiast gpu/cpu, so they expect watercooling at the very least.

Could be interesting to watch how it devolps

 

LOL!

 

Saw this coming some time ago. ( ref: http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15096 )

Next BIG thing ..... ? My $ goes on ...

Within 18 months from now (Q2 2011) Nvidia will be marketing powerful CPU/GPU combination chips.

 

It would be ironic if Intel after spending a fortune on Larrabee, end up with products with a superior CPU, yet vastly inferior GPU offering, just like the days of Intel GMA.

 

Turbo
...

I think that is the way it will be. Their knowledge of leveraging parallel processing was certainly improved on the software level when they bought Havok but on the hardware side of parallel processing they are kids compared with both AMD and Nvidia due to their competitors outstanding GPU teams.

It would not surprise me to see Intel hit a technology limit (wafer's can only get so small) that slows their leading edge, only to be surpassed in the mid term by better integration technologies from Nvidia and AMD/ATI. 2 - 3 years from now everyone might not be buying Intel.

Matthew