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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."
Invest in heat sinks! :-)
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.
Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer
Any kind of integration tends to improve power efficiency just because of the high capacitance of the PCB traces. This makes it difficult to route a PCB for high-speed inter-chip communications never mind getting multiple 2.5Gb/s (PCIe) signal traces through a connector. All this requires large driver cells to drive off-chip communication and these use a great deal of power (and moderate area) on chip. Reducing the noise floor of your signals (by keeping them on chip) also gives you more headroom for voltage reductions in your digital hardware. All in all it makes it a much better picture overall for power efficiency. But dissipating power from these new chips will still be a headache for CPU package designers and systems guys alike.