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AMD's Fusion CPU + GPU Will Ship This Year
mr_sifter writes "Intel might have beaten AMD to the punch with a CPU featuring a built-in GPU, but it relied on a relatively crude process of simply packaging two separate dies together. AMD's long-discussed Fusion product integrates the two key components into one die, and the company is confident it will be out this year — earlier than had been expected."
Actually, the situation might be reversed this time; sure, that Intel quadcores weren't "real" didn't matter much, because their underlying architecture was very good.
In contrast, Intel GFX is shit compared to AMD. The former can usually do all "daily" things (at least for now, who knows if it will keep up with more and more general usage of GPUs...)' the latter, even in integrated form, is suprisingly sensible even for most games, excluding some of the latest ones.
Plus, if AMD throws this GPU on one die, it means it will be probably manufactured at Global Foundries = probably smaller process and much more speed.
One that hath name thou can not otter
In addition to the CPGPU or whatever what they're calling it, Fusion should finally catch up to (and exceed) Intel in terms of niftilicious vector instructions. For example, it should have crypto and binary-polynomial acceleration, bit-fiddling (XOP), FMA and AVX instructions. As an implementor, I'm looking forward to having new toys to play with.
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This is great for mobile devices and laptops but I don't think I want my CPU and GPU combined in my gaming rig. I generally upgrade my video card twice as often as my CPU. If this becomes the norm then eventually I'll either get bottlenecked or have to waste money on something I don't really need. Being forced to buy two things when I only need one is not my idea of a good thing.
Arguably, the "off-chip FPU" nowadays IS a GPU - hence all the GPGPU stuff.