Fusion is the code-name for AMD’s first CPU/GPU project and in short it’s simply about designing a processor with an integrated graphics core. We’ve earlier only had access to some short-handed information from AMD self, but now Ars Technica has published a more extensive article about the concept. They’ve taken a closer look at the information that’s available about the Fusion concept and published an idea of how they think AMD will work. At the same time, they also speculate how future CPU/GPU solutions might look like and when we might see the first circuits on the market. Interestingly, they have an idea where the structure of future CPU/GPUs might be similar to the one found in Sony’s renowned Cell processor.
”The best way of getting an idea of what real CPU/GPU integration will look like comes from the Cell processor. I would imagine that a more integrated part would have multiple SIMD stream processors (i.e. unified vertex/pixel pipelines) that share an on-die bus with a general-purpose CPU core, much like Cell’s SPUs share a bus with its PPC core.”
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