AMD fusion

[kronas]

AMD is touting its next major move, CPU and GPU intergration, so this is why ATI was bought...

http://www.hardocp.com/news.html?new...xobmV3cywsLDE=

[David F]

EDIT im confused now at the start of the report it says all on one die but then it goes on to say about streaming GPU power so they are not really telling us anything

[AndrewJ]

I doubt this will work, imagine the size of the motherboard and heatsinks needed?

Just imagine a motherboard with cpu fan, chipset fan/heatsink, then the HD leads then ram then sound chips and now a huge gaming grade chip on it aswell with a fan/heatsink????? it would either be one mother of motherboards or just a silly idea.

[David F]

Well if the gpu and cpu are integrated onto the same die there will be less hardware as you wont need a graphics card.To be honest I do not know what conclusions to draw from the post as the diagrams in the slides appear to be one chip but the review says stream processors that utilize gpu power which to me suggests seperate hardware so I dunno it could just mean there doing away with the pci-e bus connection to the gfx and driving them by different means im sure they know

it does look like they are meaning to create all in one chips though which knowing ATI cores will be bloody hot

[AndrewJ]

Well Gpu's right now take alot of power and make alot of heat, to put them on the mobo as long with the processor or even inside the same chip is going to need some whole new cooling idea and i bet it will be huge and bulky and likely Intel will continue to use the old style and push ahead in the market.

[David F]

I expect AMD to catch up and this could well be the innovation needed its something new.The merging of AMD and ATI has to produce something totally amazing to do justice to this takeover. If they pull it off with the 4 different set ups as per slides it could be the dawning of a new era. AMD took the risk by releasing 64 bit cpus 6 months before they were really ready with the 754 clawhammers and it paid off giving AMD a massive lead in 64 bit computing something that Intel have yet to achieved. Maybe the release of Vista will reverse this but I know Intel cpus do not work as well with xp64 as AMD did so AMD had a few years well at the top

[punky]

I see what it says.... Not sure why they are planning that route though... Are GPUs going to be exceeding PCI-e bus speed soon? Its like having a dual core processor, except one is CPU, and one is GPU. There's lower latency etc because they are both very local to each other, and it sounds like its load balancing, so the GPU can help out the CPU duing CPU-intensive tasks, and the CPU can help out the GPU during GPU intensive tasks.

That's all well and good, but you lack modularbility. If one thing goes wrong, you have to throw the CPU and GPU, rather than just change graphics card.

[David F]

They have to have a strong belief in there product for it to go out on paper as the first venture since the takeover .Its all very exciting to me the speed computing is developing

[AndrewJ]

Originally Posted by punky

I see what it says.... Not sure why they are planning that route though... Are GPUs going to be exceeding PCI-e bus speed soon? Its like having a dual core processor, except one is CPU, and one is GPU. There's lower latency etc because they are both very local to each other, and it sounds like its load balancing, so the GPU can help out the CPU duing CPU-intensive tasks, and the CPU can help out the GPU during GPU intensive tasks.

That's all well and good, but you lack modularbility. If one thing goes wrong, you have to throw the CPU and GPU, rather than just change graphics card.

Very good point there, I think they will run seperate much like onboard gfx only that they will have a heatsink/fan now this won't be a problem but a whole new approach to motherboard design, and case design will have to be thought up for cooling.

Or will watercooling become a much more financially viable solution.