AMD Fusion - CPU & GPU Integration

[b1gapl]

Have you guys heard about this?

"AMD has given us some more specifics about Fusion, albeit still a little vague on specific as to exactly how a stream processing on the GPU would be leveraged. But if you thought CPU and GPU integration onto one die was just about low end computers, AMD is painting a different picture."

http://www.shoutwire.com/viewstory/39096/AMD_Fusion_CPU_GPU_Integration

 

[KBlair]

So, they bought ATI just so they can integrate visual instructions into CPUs? Smart move, unless Intel can acquire Nvidia.

 

[TheEnd187]

is this the thing about the HTX slot???

 

[zerodayATK]

So, they bought ATI just so they can integrate visual instructions into CPUs? Smart move, unless Intel can acquire Nvidia.

doubt that... it was hard for amd to get ati and i think they only got ati bc they are canada based ... with nvidia thats a diff story....

 

[TriEclipse]

Nvidia's not hurting, quite the opposite actually. If Intel tried to acquire them, it wouldn't get past the FCC. Its just not going to happen, lol, not anytime soon anyway. But I wouldn't doubt that Intel and Nvidia will start to work very closely together.

 

[Nitestick]

this is old news. the fatal flaw to the concept is the combined power draw of a CPU and GPU on a single die could be just about crippling for the motherboard's electrical traces and the heat output would be far too high. furthermore the issue of memory bandwidth poses a problem. i'm sure everyone has noticed the difference in GDDR and DDR frequencies. integrating the GPU to the CPU would mean it needs to access system memory. hello bottleneck. so for it to be worth it we would need to either have motherboards which have integrated memory for use by the GPU or motherboards with seperate slots for GPU and system memory, also introducing a new memory standard for the second set of slots. it would also have very poor upgradeability and a bunch of other drawbacks.

if anyone is interested in reading a fairly in depth discussion on it you can sign up to this forum to read (it only allows members to view threads).
http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=519145
the threads about a month old