Yesterday at the annual analyst’s meeting with AMD, they really talked up the upcoming Fusion parts that will combine AMD’s CPU and GPU into a single silicon, offering the “Best of Both Worlds” on a single chip. What did analysts think?
Fusion is designed to save AMD’s bacon,” said analyst Roger Kay with Endpoint Technologies Associates. “AMD has just marched across the desert of 2009 and 2010 to arrive at the moment when they have a product that might put them ahead. Fusion is a pretty good deal. They have bet, if not the farm, much of the livestock and the barn on its success.”
Bold words for sure, but they’re about right. Intel’s current GPU offerings, to put it bluntly, suck, and NVidia doesn’t have a suitable desktop GPU (Tegra is another story). Putting both on one silicon is a risky, but powerful move that could really put AMD in the forefront. That is, if it actually works.
The first prototypes came back to Austin from the Taiwan factory in April. They worked so well that AMD decided to move up the production schedule by a few months. Once the early prototypes had been thoroughly tested last spring, the Bobcat design team took part of the day off to celebrate their achievement at Buffalo Billiards on East Sixth Street downtown.
Now to see if they can just meet demand.
A step into the near future of computing..