AMD talks specs on Fusion, continues to release nothing

At this point we've heard so much and seen so little of AMD's Fusion hybrid CPU / GPU chip that we're honestly starting to consider it vapor -- AMD first announced it in 2006, after all. Still, the company's VP of marketing chatted up PC World about new Fusion chips today, saying that a 45nm notebook-optimized version codenamed "Swift" based on the Phenom core would be the first off the line. That doesn't line up with the last roadmap we saw out of Sunnyvale, which had the first Fusion chip based on the workstation-class Bulldozer core, but hey, we'll let AMD say whatever it wants, just as long as see some actual chips sometime soon.

[System48 @ Jan 25th 2008 2:08PM]

Release nothing? whatever...
They are getting really good at press releases?

[Ignatius @ Jan 25th 2008 2:11PM]

I wish AMD would gear themselves back up to the power of the Socket 939 days...

[paragraph @ Jan 25th 2008 2:15PM]

I wish AMD would stop shooting itself in the foot...

as a whole, they are now the underdog... i havn't seen a GPU or CPU from them that i've wanted, that includes the phenom, and the new HD ATI cards...

For shame AMD... just do something right... for me... for america... for 9/11....

But seriously, i'm starting to get worried about them...

[EMoShunz @ Jan 25th 2008 2:18PM]

ya. i love my 3000+
hell, the faster 939 are still butt kickin'

[EMoShunz @ Jan 25th 2008 2:17PM]

i sometimes wonder if they were faster on releasing these if apple would have picked them up for their form factor...good fit (as long as they are x86/x64 compatible).

i have faith in these, but, ya, too long could kill it before it starts.

[TJ Johnson @ Jan 25th 2008 2:24PM]

I'm sorry to be the one to say it but you fail for bring up Apple in this thread and I use Apple products.

I know my rankings will be low for this but honestly, I don't care. It's getting old, even for me.

[EMoShunz @ Jan 25th 2008 2:30PM]

@TJ Johnson:
what? how could that upset you. ok, let me add the gateway one and the dell xps one as well. my point is the imac (like the others) is slim like a laptop, therefore a more efficient/smaller/cooler chip like the fusion would be beneficial.
the reason i brought up apple is because they recently made a switch from all motorola to all intel. dell and gateway did not recently make a huge switch that could have benefited from tech like this in an exclusive nature.

[TJ Johnson @ Jan 25th 2008 3:05PM]

Fair enough, I recant my previous statement since I misread or misinterpreted your initial post.

Normally I hate taking back something I've said but this time I'm okay with it. At least now we can talk about Apple some more :-P (Let the negative votes commence...)

[jdeuel @ Jan 25th 2008 2:25PM]

2 years is vaporware? Hyperbole much?

[NHAnimator @ Jan 25th 2008 2:32PM]

It's a bunch of xPU's and cPU's. Heck! I could do that!

(Except for that one Dedicated xPU that's turned sideways. I never could do those very well.)

[EMoShunz @ Jan 25th 2008 3:00PM]

:)
seriously though, that 'sideways' one makes the most sense to me...a cpu that does nothing but hand off jobs to the 2 xpu's 1 for general and 1 for dedicated...awesome...
but, i'm not an engineer of these types of things, so i could be way off base.

[ethana2 @ Jan 25th 2008 6:28PM]

If this means we're throwing out the gpu for a stream co processor and rendering it on the same process as the CPU, I so want one. I've always despised having so much power in my machine and not being able to use it for whatever I want at the time.

AMD should spin their own distro to take advantage of it; easy showcasing, since all of the source for everything from the kernel to xine is out there. It's about time we offloaded the menial stuff from the CPU.

[ChronoZaga @ Jan 25th 2008 2:36PM]

I would prefer to have the option to upgrade my CPU and GPU independently. That being said, I think there is merit in programmable secondary/tertiary cores like on the cell (assuming it works as Sony PR advertises).

[paragraph @ Jan 25th 2008 2:46PM]

Well, you make a good point, but On-CPU GPU's will outperform anything in a PCIe slot.

If they made it upgradeable, like some sort of module, i'd definitly buy in. Even if there is some sort of bus, it would still be faster than a traditional GPU.

Of course, i want the ability to upgrade my cache memory back... call me old fashioned, but that was a damn good feature...

Ideally this would be used in laptop systems, where 90% of the time you can't upgrade your graphics anyway.

[TJ Johnson @ Jan 25th 2008 3:19PM]

Fair point paragraph and it goes without mentioning that it would be far more energy-efficient, as well. Oh, and probably quieter, too. To be honest, I've been sucked into the Mac cult for a few years now and can't be bothered to keep up with all this gaming tech. Since it's obvious that hybrid chips like this one would free up your PCIe slots, how feasible would it be to integrate it with an SLI setup?

It seems to me that your idea about a module of some sorts would be best...scrap any unneeded or unwanted ports/slots on the mobo and add an (or two, three, or four!!!!) extra GPU module ports/slots.

Also, I remember when you were able to upgrade cache memory so please don't bring it up again. I still shed a tear (or a couple hundred) whenever I think about it.

[Charles @ Jan 25th 2008 3:23PM]

If you upgrade only your graphics card your frame rate ends up CPU limited and if you upgrade only your CPU your frame rate ends up limited by the graphics card. To get the best out of your new purchase you generally have to upgrade them both at the same time so I personally like the idea of having the GPU integrated onto the CPU.

I just hope AMD pull it off. If it weren't for AMD Intel would still be releasing crap like the Pentium 4. The Core 2 is great and all my PCs now have a Q6600 (all of which have overclocked beyond 3GHz) but it's only thanks to AMD that we've got such a great CPU from Intel so hopefully AMD can get back in the game soon.

[Andir3.0 @ Jan 25th 2008 4:05PM]

Exactly Charles.

Though I have to wonder. Intel has been gun-ho (sp?) into developing Raytracing to replace the need for GPUs. (Duh, they have the most to gain from moving video to the CPU!) I kind of wonder if AMD shouldn't also be considering such a turn. Now, I know... there are opponents to RTRT (real time ray tracing) but logically, it has a better chance of scaling faster than raster rendering at this moment in time. With optimizations, we could see a full blown RT engine in only a few years and it can only go up from there with deeper ray casting and better refraction counts.

Who knows. Maybe that's what this enables. The ability to plug in a "ray accelerator" chip that has optimizations for ray-casting math. AMD could utilize some of the expertise from ATI to further optimize the more graphic intense execution paths. It would be Intel & AMD ray tracing vs nVidia Raster.

[Corwin @ Jan 25th 2008 4:57PM]

Well "paragraph", nothing a good soldering iron and etching can't fix.....

[vileta2 @ Jan 25th 2008 2:54PM]

I'm still running a 939 board (A8N32-SLi Deluxe w/ A64 X2 4600+) as my primary rig, and I love it. It seems that after 939, AMD went downhill. but I remain faithful that they will return. Someday....

[ByronGman @ Jan 25th 2008 2:59PM]

Oh AMD, where have you gone?

[CosterMonger @ Jan 25th 2008 3:01PM]

AMD should quit playing tetris and make a better drop in then the X2 6400+

AMD: leaders in low end

if this keeps up you should change you name to MAD - fire Hector Ruiz and replace him with Dr. Claw

[michas_pi @ Jan 25th 2008 3:01PM]

I recently upgraded from Socket A to Socket AM2 and I am very pleased with the switch. If I had the money I would purchase an AM2+ motherboard and go with revised Phenom (I don't like the thermal output of the current Phenoms).

[OneLove @ Jan 25th 2008 3:03PM]

How much?

[EMoShunz @ Jan 25th 2008 3:35PM]

good question. i've been googleing a bit...but nothing. anyone?

[OneLove @ Jan 28th 2008 11:15AM]

how does this ranking thing work?

[TJ Johnson @ Jan 25th 2008 3:56PM]

Now that I think about it, forget about pushing AMD to release some new chips. I say we start pushing the software companies to release programs that support the mult-core architectures and 64-bit addressing. They've been dragging their feet for a while now.

[Poonanny @ Jan 25th 2008 4:08PM]

and what wrong with current 32-bit apps? I see no reason to push 64-bit. Milk all you can now - what's next? 32GB memory too little for apps?

[TJ Johnson @ Jan 25th 2008 4:32PM]

Fine, then by your logic there's no point of having any 64-bit CPUs except for extra memory. There are more reasons for pushing 64-bit development than just extra memory, ya know...

But I'm more interested in multi-threaded apps, if I'm honest.

[Poonanny @ Jan 25th 2008 4:46PM]

The next iPhone will have multi-threaded multi-processor support... :D

[ethana2 @ Jan 25th 2008 6:30PM]

Another person with no access to source code. Sitting there, powerless, just /hoping/ someone will take the time to compile their software for /his/ platform.

^_^ Sorry pal, you're not where the money is, as they say.

[TJ Johnson @ Jan 25th 2008 6:45PM]

This is what I get for doing five things at once. Damn you typos!!!

Oh well, this issue was sooo two hours ago...

[Poonanny @ Jan 25th 2008 4:06PM]

AMD = Cyrix.

The difference is that back in the day, INTEL could not kill off all processor manufacturers because they would be a huge monopoly - so the logical thing to do was to kill off some, leave the one hanging.

Intel is doing to AMD what Microsoft is doing to Apple. Bleed the little fcuk but not enough to kill it off - then revive it by letting it make subpar processors - then Intel reclaims the throne - repeat, rinse, spit out.

[Kurian @ Jan 25th 2008 4:24PM]

Where the heck are the memory chips going to be? I dont see any room for 1gb of GDDR on a CPU.

[ethana2 @ Jan 25th 2008 6:33PM]

If they did 16MB of L2, they could use 3 byte addressing... but I don't think anyone cares.
..certainly not a GB on chip. That's not going to happen for quite some time, if ever.

[melvz @ Jan 25th 2008 10:34PM]

All talk and no action....



All talk, More Delays!

[degac @ Jan 26th 2008 4:36AM]

Well, I think it's not so easy create a 'new' cpu + gpu in one package.
Cell - for example - is a special revision of PowerPC + 7 SPE and there were THREE big companies (Sony, Toshiba and IBM) to develope it...a little bigger than AMD I think.
Phenom/Barcelona is the first step (4 real indipendent cores in one chip) so the basis for the Fusion there are already here: I think the only real main limit/problem could be the internal memory controller: this shoul work between CPU(cores) and System (like today), CPU and cache (...and AMD has a little problem - they say - with it) and CPU and GPU.
And of course AMD MUST implement proper drivers to take advantage of Discrete GFX card, on-chip GPU and (maybe) GPU integrated in mainboard (call it like 'HybridCrossFire 2.0').
Of course from a business point of view AMD has *now* other problems to resolve first of spend to much resources on Funsion (in my opinion of course)
PS: Intel delayed its own Lareebe chip to 2009-2010, maybe it's not so easy even for a giant like Intel...

[Joshua Walters @ Jan 26th 2008 4:04PM]

I know alot of people are going to disagree, but the Phenom is a great chip.

One, look at the price. You cant get a quad core (Intel actually doesnt have true quad core, they have two dual on one chip) for that price.

Two, I have been using my Phenom for a month now, and have had NO problems. It plays nice with every game I have thrown at it.

Anyways, I could care less about this chip being delayed.

One thing I have learned is that when they "combine" things, it doesnt do either as well.