Well, well, a new AMD roadmap promising a superior hybrid CPU/GPU chip sometime in the distant future. That doesn't sound like the same old vaporware refrain we've been hearing about Fusion since 2006 at all, does it? Yep, everyone's favorite underdog is back in the paperwork game, and this time we've got a sheaf of pointy-eared details on the company's upcoming notebook plans, all culminating in the "Sabine" platform, which is wholly dependent on Sunnyvale actually shipping a mobile variant of the delayed Fusion APU in 2011 once it finds the Leprechaun City. In the meantime, look forward to a slew of forgettable laptops getting bumped to the "Danube" platform, which supports 45nm quad-core chips, DDR3-1066 memory, and an absolutely shocking 14 USB 2.0 ports. Ugh, seriously -- does anyone else think AMD should suck it up, put out a cheap Atom-class processor paired with a low-end Radeon that can do reasonable HD video output, and actually take it to Intel in booming low-end market instead of goofing around with the expensive, underperforming Neo platform and a fantasy chip it's been promising for three years now? Call us crazy.

[Via PC Authority; thanks Geller]

It's not entirely clear what the purpose of AMD's newest supercomputer is, but it's pretty safe to say that the company is making it out to be something better than it is. All harshness aside, the so-called Fusion Render Cloud will reportedly be the planet's fastest graphics supercomputer. It sounds like the machine will be good for farming out tasks, and more specifically, for "real-time rendering of film and visual effects graphics on an unprecedented scale." Evidently AMD's hoping that gaming firms tap into the beast in order to develop and deploy next-generation game content, so that probably means it's worthless for you. But hey, it sounds awesome, right?

Up until now, Fusion-io's ioDrive has pretty much put every other SSD-on-a-PCIe-card to shame in terms of sheer performance, but it just might be looking at its first formidable competitor in the Micron Washington. The prototype device was recently showcased on video (posted after the break), and while we're not told how capacious it is, it is understood to be using 64-bit SLC NAND chips. When placed in a Xeon-powered server, the unit is able to achieve 150,000 to 160,000 random write IOPS with a bandwidth of 800MB/sec per card. Micron is convinced that it can reach a bandwidth of 1GB/sec and 200,000 IOPS with this technology, though Fusion-io's CTO proclaims that users can achieve "over 6GB per second" when using eight of its ioDrives in conjunction. Of course, the aforementioned ioDrive is actually shipping, whereas this elusive Washington doodad won't see commercial light until at least 2010.

[Via The Register, thanks Vik]

We already got word of AMD's new 45nm Shanghai Opterons this morning, but it looks like that was only just the beginning of a deluge of news out of the slightly troubled company today, which includes the expected announcement of its netbook platform, the introduction of its new ATI Stream brand, and word of a delay to its much-vaunted Fusion platform. On the netbook front, AMD is hoping that its "Conesus" processor will prove to be a formidable competitor to Intel's Atom, with it apparently existing only in a 45nm, dual-core version that includes 1MB of cache and support for DDR2 RAM. Look for it to roll out in the first half of 2009. Coming ahead of that is AMD's new ATI Stream brand, which encompasses a number of the company's different stream and GPU computing initiatives and attempts to make them more attractive to both consumer and enterprise markets. To that end, AMD will be adding Stream support to its next Catalyst update (due in December), which will apparently let folks easily run stream applications that make use of your graphics card's GPU for some added computing power. It's not all high-fives around AMD, however, as the company has also let out word that its Fusion platform based around the dual CPU / GPU "Shrike" processor will be delayed until sometime in 2011, a full year later than originally planned. As if that wasn't enough, it's also shaken up the rest of its processor roadmap a bit, although it's entirely possible that it'll fluctuate a bit further before things really settle down. Hit up the links below to break all that down piece by piece.

Read - Extreme Tech, "AMD Answers Atom with 'Conesus,' Roadmap Update"
Read - PC Perspective, "ATI Stream Computing: From the desktop to the datacenter"
Read - HotHardware, "AMD ATI Stream Computing Update"
Read - TG Daily, "AMD delays Fusion processor to 2011"

Not content with sneaking a dedicated Blu-ray player into CEDIA, Cambridge Audio has just taken the plastic off of two new HiFi systems in Milan. The Sonata, aimed squarely at audio junkies, consists of a 2.1-channel DAB receiver (£299; $547), which offers 40-watts of amplification per channel and your choice of an upscaling 1080p DVD player or a Wolfson-DAC-loaded CD unit for another £179 ($327). The all-in-one Fusion (£300; $549) includes 30-watts per channel, an integrated CD player, DAB / FM tuner, USB port, an SD slot and a customized iPod dock (which is also bundled with the aforementioned Sonata). Both units are slated to hit the UK in silver and black, though the November-bound Fusion will get a jump on the Sonata, which hits in February 2009.

What can we say? Intempo has launched a new pair of iPod-compatible speaker systems, and unless you're somehow just entering the market for one in the latter half of 2008, chances are you're already yawning. Nevertheless, the RDi-W (pictured) does distinguish itself somewhat by including support for DAB and wireless internet radio, and there's a 30-watt internal amplifier to kick out the jams. The much drabber Fusion keeps things small and simple by offering up just 25-watts of power and DAB / FM tuners. Expect the couple to sashay into e-tailers next month for £169.99 ($316) / £99 ($184).

Read - RDi-W
Read - Fusion

In yet more news about the perpetually forthcoming Fusion CPU / GPU combos from AMD, new details have been leaked regarding the chips' sizes, configurations, and other bits of insufferably tedious details that only Professor Frink could truly love. According to this latest report, the "first" Fusion processor will be called "Shrike," sport a dual-core Phenom CPU, an ATI RV800 GPU, and a footprint of just 40nm. Another chip, codenamed "Falcon," will debut in 2010 at a 32nm size, based around a platform known as "Bulldozer," and will be launched to combat Intel's 32nm offering. Of course, we've been hearing about these chips since 2006, so we're not exactly on the edge of our seats hearing new details of what essentially amounts to vaporware.

We'd heard that AMD was working on another competitor to Intel's Atom chips, but yet another set of insanely boring leaked slides indicates that the company is planning on using a version of its next-gen Fusion CPU / GPU hybrid chip to power a new mobile platform codenamed "Shrike." The new ultra-low-voltage platform is aimed at machines like the Fujitsu U810 and Dell Latitude XT, so it's not quite a direct competitor for Atom and VIA's Isaiah -- that's what Puma is for -- but there's bound to be some overlap, and the appeal of a real GPU in a mobile device is pretty obvious. Rumor is that Shrike could beat the planned "Swift" chips off the line as the first Fusion chips -- that is, if any of this stuff actually ever ships, since we've been hearing about it since 2006. Let's see some chips instead of slides next time, alright AMD?

We already saw a demo of the next-gen version of Ford Sync, but it looks like what we saw was just a taste -- our friends over at Autoblog scored some shots of the 2010 Ford Fusion's interior, and it features a monster 8.5-inch touchscreen, which will also apparently make it into the 2009 F-150 pickup truck. It's not clear how much the system will control or how much it'll cost, but you can bet it's not nearly as sweet as the 1979 Atari Riviera. Hit the read link for a couple full size shots.

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.

You may remember the lovable yet rascally ioDrive PCIe card from Fusion which we told you about back in the sun-drenched, salad days of September. Well, we've gotten a few more details on the "SAN in the palm of your hand," and we thought we'd share. As you'll recall, the card is meant to deliver very high, sustained read / write speeds, allowing the ioDrive to perform "nearly a thousand times faster than any existing disk drive." Well, the good folks at Fusion have now given the system a price -- the card starts at $2,400 -- and offered up some fresh info, like that the ioDrive is NAND flash-based, will support multiple terabytes of virtual memory, and has access rates on par with DRAM. Which is real fast. Hit the link for a lot more info, and don't be afraid to peruse the company's .pdf data sheet.

It's not all just questionably-useful tween gear for Nickelodeon today -- the company is also releasing a line of DMPs that would be pretty tempting if they weren't festooned with giant pictures of The Naked Brothers Band and SpongeBob. The $40 SpongeBob player holds 500 MP3s and goes for 10 hours on the built-in rechargeable battery, while the $50 Fission Digital Music Player comes in SpongeBob and Naked Brothers varieties and features a motion-sensitive remix feature that allows you to tweak your tunes by shaking the player. The cream of the crop, though, is the $100 Fusion Digital Media Player (yeah, no hurried parents are ever going to confuse those names), which rocks a pretty nice QVGA screen with what appears to be fairly smooth video playback, 1GB of internal storage with SD expansion, and a selection of preloaded and downloadable games. Not bad -- except for the terrible, terrible shame. Check 'em all out -- including some hands-on shots -- in the gallery.

Apparently, Dell is working with VMware (makers of Fusion) and SWsoft (the team behind Parallels) to develop new computers with virtualization features for a new line of the company's PCs. According to reports, Dell's chief technology officer Kevin Kettler confirmed the collaboration at the Linuxworld conference in San Francisco. The plans right now are for the systems to tackle virtual versions of Windows and Linux which could run in tandem on a user's machine, though when asked about support for Apple's OS X on the virtual PCs, Kettler said "I can't speculate on that," but went on to say "virtualization is very powerful. It's an environment that would allow many different operating systems to coexist. You can interpret that however you would like." So -- at least as far as we can tell -- not an out-and-out "no."

[Via Pocket-lint]

AMD had itself a busy day today: not only did the European Commission file antitrust charges against Intel for interfering with AMD's business in Europe, the Sunnyvale company released an updated product roadmap at its annual analyst conference. With the quad-core Barcelona processor on track for an August launch, the company announced its next-gen mobile platform, "Puma," which will feature hybrid graphics support. Looking even farther ahead, AMD also announced some chips we won't see for a while yet: the all-new workstation- and server-oriented "Bulldozer" chip and mobile device "Bobcat" chip are scheduled to arrive sometime in 2010, and represent entirely new chip designs for the company. The hits didn't stop there, however: AMD's also announced its first Fusion integrated CPU / GPU chip, the "Falcon," which will use the Bulldozer core -- no word on what happened to Hawk or when we'll see this ship. Finally, the company answered speculation that it's looking to get out of the manufacturing game by saying that it's aiming for the "right balance" between in-house and outside fabrication, but that it's committed to its current existing mix through 2009. All in all, it looks like AMD has got some pretty ambitious plans for the future -- but will it be enough to hold off scrappy upstart Hynix? Tons more info, including all the slides, at the read link.

[Thanks, Ryan]