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AMD Fusion Details Leaked
negRo_slim writes "AMD has pushed Fusion as one of the main reasons to justify its acquisition of ATI. Since then, AMD's finances have changed colors and are now deep in the red, the top management has changed, and Fusion still isn't anything AMD wants to discuss in detail. But there are always 'industry sources' and these sources have told us that Fusion is likely to be introduced as a half-node chip."
A higher level of integration makes sense for laptops. Putting the GPU with the CPU also makes a lot more sense when we consider that the CPU these days also means the place closest to the memory controllers.
In addition, you have an interconnect between the two which is far faster than anything else available today. However, there is no code today that will use it explicitly, the whole paradigm of a GPU is that you do not read data back to the CPU.
So, for now, the benefits are really physical size and cost. A CPU-integrated graphics core can be better than one placed on the motherboard when you have an integrated memory controller, but a separate card with dedicated RAM should beat both, as long as you do not expect a new "chatty" paradigm of GPU usage.