The Outlook On AMD's Fusion Plans

PreacherTom writes "Now that AMD's acquisition of ATI is complete, what do the cards hold for the parent company? According to most experts, it's a promising outlook for AMD . One of the brightest stars in AMD's future could be the Fusion program, which will 'fuse' AMD's CPUs with ATI's GPUs (graphics processing units) in a single, unified processor. The product is expected to debut in late 2007 or early 2008. Fusion brings a hopes of energy efficiency, with the CPU and GPU residing on a single chip. Fusion chips could also ease the impact on users who plan to use Windows Vista with Aero, an advanced interface that will only run on computers that can handle a heavy graphics load. Lastly, the tight architecture provided by Fusion could lead to a new set of small, compelling devices that can handle rich media."

Comments

Bad idea for upgrades

[rjmars97]

Although I can see the potential efficiency increases, combining the GPU and CPU into one chip means that you will be forced to upgrade one when you only want to upgrade the other. To me, this seems like a bad idea in that AMD would have to make dozens of GPU/CPU combinations. Say I want one of AMD's chips in my headless server, am I going to have to buy a more expensive processor because it has a high powered GPU that I don't want or need? What if I want to build a system with a good processor to start, but due to budget reasons want to hold off on buying a good video card?

Combining the CPU and GPU may make sense for embedded systems or as a replacement for integrated graphics, but I cannot see it working for those who prefer to have specific components based on other factors.

Disaster for Linux and OSS

[hirschma]

Whoa. You're going to need a closed-source kernel driver to use your CPU now? They can eat me. The graphics driver situation is bad enough.

This one is untouchable until they open up the graphics drivers - or goodbye AMD/ATI.

jh

It's for laptops and budget systems

[Chris Burke]

Especially the former, where you can't really upgrade anyway and you typically have a GPU soldered to the board.

The advantages of a combined CPU/GPU in this space are:
1) Fewer chips means a cheaper board.
2) The GPU is connected directly to the memory interface, so UMA solutions will not suck nearly as hard.
3) No HT hop to get to the GPU, so power is saved on the interface and CPU-GPU communication will be very low latency.

I highly doubt AMD is planning on using combined CPU/GPU solutions on their mainstream desktop parts, and they are absolutely not going to do so for server parts. I think in those spaces they'd much rather have four cores on the CPU, and let you slap in the latest-greatest (ATI I'm sure they hope, but if NVidia gives them the best benchmark score vs Intel chips then so be it) graphics card.

AMD has already distinguished their server, mobile, desktop, and value lines. They are not going to suddenly become retarded and forget that these markets have different needs and force an ATI GPU on all of them.

At the risk of being modded reundant

[kimvette]

I'm going to ask:

That's great and all, but does it run Linux?

I'm not kidding, either. Is AMD going to force ATI to open up its specs and its drivers so that we can FINALLY get stable and FULLY functional drivers for Linux, or are they still going to be partially-implemented limited-function binary blobs where support for older-yet-still-in-distribution-channels products will be phased out in order to "encourage" (read: force) customers to upgrade to new hardware, discarding still-current computers?

That is why I do not buy ATI products any more. They provide ZERO VIVO support in Linux, They phase out chip support in drivers even while they are actively distributed. They do not maintain compatibility of older drivers to ensure they can be linked to the latest kernels.

This is why I went Core 2 Duo for my new system and do not run AMD - their merger with ATI. My fear is that if ATI rubs off on AMD then support for AMD processors and chipsets will only get worse, not better.