AMD Fusion: How It Started, Where It’s Going, And What It Means

[god_43]

You've already read about APUs, and maybe you're even using them now. But the road to creating APUs was paved with a number of struggles and unsung breakthroughs. This is the story of how hybrid chips came to be at AMD and where they’re going.

“Nothing is more difficult than the art of maneuver. What is difficult about maneuver is to make the devious route the most direct and to turn misfortune to advantage.”

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

When I interviewed Dave Orton, then the president of ATI Technologies, in 2002, one of the first things he told me, "It’s always what’s possible in the business that keeps people going." No more prophetic words could describe the coming merger between his company and CPU manufacturer AMD. The big question, of course, isn’t what is possible or even whether the possible will become reality. The real question is whether the possible will become reality soon enough.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...tory,3262.html


wow damn that is a great article......Jesus man! very illuminating.

[ajaidev]

Interesting but known by most, Intel and AMD both look at integrated GPU high performance CPU's as the future for consumers. I had even asked why not integrate the GPU to the motherboard with added independent memory controller i got a ear full from an Intel engg. overall fusion is the future and from what i see Intel has a butt load of power in Haswell whereas AMD has yet to release Trinity

[RejZoR]

I'd like to see CPU's to get similar mass parallelism as GPU's have now. Not just GPU being merged with the GPU in a single die...

[zalbard]

Interesting but known by most, Intel and AMD both look at integrated GPU high performance CPU's as the future for consumers. I had even asked why not integrate the GPU to the motherboard with added independent memory controller i got a ear full from an Intel engg. overall fusion is the future and from what i see Intel has a butt load of power in Haswell whereas AMD has yet to release Trinity

Is Intel focusing on OpenCL as well? Or what are they planning to use on the software side?

[SEA]

Overall fusion is the future and from what i see Intel has a butt load of power in Haswell whereas AMD has yet to release Trinity

Right, but Trinity was released month ago, widely available in mobile market.

[Tao~]

Nice article, but its written from a perspective that wouldn't be an anticlimax if AMD was dominating the market now ; Of course this is not the end , there's still a long road ahead, the CPU and GPU are sharing the silicon, but when they will be sharing the workload we shall have the REAL thing. Way to go Intelamd.

[AbortRetryFail?]

This is a stab at it -- feel free to correct me, ladies

As it stands now, AMD is promoting unified address space and cache coherency for their ultimate APU HSA arch in the next few years, with the CPU/GPU cores sharing the memory controller.

I'm not sure about Haswell, but my understanding is SB/IB use a 'ring bus' whereby GPU cores (and the memory controller, northbridge, media logic, etc.) share last-level CPU cache.

The performance advantage Intel currently gains in this fashion is the shared last-level cache runs at CPU core speed.

As noted, Intel has integrated northbridge functions on-die. AMD uses a 'hub' with off-die NB, and has implied that '3rd-party IP' (i.e., ARM) may be integrated to share the unified address space, memory controller, and NB hub.

[jogshy]

Any SB/IB + a discrete low-profile cheap GPU will obliterate those APUs in an HTPC. I hope AMd could put there almost 800 GCN shaders or I won't be in .

[Syn.]

Any SB/IB + a discrete low-profile cheap GPU will obliterate those APUs in an HTPC. I hope AMd could put there almost 800 GCN shaders or I won't be in .

And what about SB/IB with no help from a cheap dGPU?

[ajaidev]

Right, but Trinity was released month ago, widely available in mobile market.

No desktop availability even for mobile market top end is not available freely not to mention that Intel will most likely intro desktop along/first as compared to mobile. AMD will not intro low/mid end Trinity even in OCT which is again a bad move they want to sell off any inventory possible which is greedy and may result in low end IVB taking their spaces.

Is Intel focusing on OpenCL as well? Or what are they planning to use on the software side?

Yes it is specially in the ultrabook sector and by extension the laptop/desktop sector as well. In IDF there will be limited support for OpenCL but there will be a whole presentation on it and specialized tools will be dispensed. With Haswell this should get better but Broadwell and Haswell are far from what they could have been if the LRB project was a success that is.

[zalbard]

Yes it is specially in the ultrabook sector and by extension the laptop/desktop sector as well. In IDF there will be limited support for OpenCL but there will be a whole presentation on it and specialized tools will be dispensed. With Haswell this should get better but Broadwell and Haswell are far from what they could have been if the LRB project was a success that is.

Thanks for the info.
It will be interesting to compare tools & licensing models offered by Intel to those offered by HSA Foundation. I guess the technical approach should be rather similar.

[Generic user #2]

Any SB/IB + a discrete low-profile cheap GPU will obliterate those APUs in an HTPC. I hope AMd could put there almost 800 GCN shaders or I won't be in .

more money = better performance? really that surprising?

[FlanK3r]

Thanks for the info.
It will be interesting to compare tools & licensing models offered by Intel to those offered by HSA Foundation. I guess the technical approach should be rather similar.

I agree, Im really looking forward for Steamroller APU/CPU (hope,sometimes at 2013-Q4?)