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AMD to take on Intel's Atom with lightweight Fusion chip
AMD's Fusion products are part of an ongoing project to unite its CPU and GPU cores on one chip. The first Fusion processors should appear early next year, with the netbook chip aimed at 12-inch devices or smaller. It will consume 10W to 15W of power, and according to Nigel Dessau, AMD's chief marketing officer, the integrated GPU will offer enough performance to not require a discrete solution, such as the Nvidia Ion.
It seems likely that the processor is AMD's 32nm Bobcat introduced last November, but that's unconfirmed at this point. There is also no official release date or pricing, nor is it known what manufacturers might use the lightweight Fusion.
User Comments (31)
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Tekkaraiden on March 11, 2010 8:38 PM |
I'm glad to here they are finally releasing something to complete with Intel on the ultra low powered platform. It's unfortunate it will be another year until they actually release something. |
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ToastOz on March 11, 2010 9:04 PM |
Targeting early next year? sucks if you want something soon. |
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Guest on March 11, 2010 9:25 PM |
Too little, too late -- or in terms of power -- too much, too late. |
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tengeta on March 11, 2010 9:49 PM |
Its competition, it gives Intel a reason to improve the Atom product line... thats a win-win in my book. |
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pipopaz on March 11, 2010 11:09 PM |
Wow AMD you are quite late for the netbook competition, Intel has been dominated it for quite awhile now, good luck catching up. |
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Yoda8232 on March 11, 2010 11:26 PM |
Long overdue, needs to be priced well and perform well because of it being so late. |
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recipe7 on March 11, 2010 11:59 PM |
pipopaz said: Exactly. They will always be playing catch-up. I can't imagine when, or if, they can ever get ahead of Intel in the chip market.
Wow AMD you are quite late for the netbook competition, Intel has been dominated it for quite awhile now, good luck catching up. |
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seefizzle on March 12, 2010 12:14 AM |
I'd really like to see this chip be powerful. Give me a netbook with a 2.5 ghz processor and I'd be as happy as a f*g in a d*ck tree. |
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ansarimikail on March 12, 2010 12:32 AM |
Finally something to compete against in the netbook arena from amd. I thought they were never going to make something for the netbooks. |
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tjcarey on March 12, 2010 1:57 AM |
I'm looking forward to see if they make some mini-itx boards with this processor like intel did with the atom. |
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EduardsN on March 12, 2010 3:24 AM |
recipe7 said: They are ahead in the price/performance ratio. Also the best gaming cpu in my opinion!
pipopaz said: Exactly. They will always be playing catch-up. I can't imagine when, or if, they can ever get ahead of Intel in the chip market. Wow AMD you are quite late for the netbook competition, Intel has been dominated it for quite awhile now, good luck catching up. |
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slh28 on March 12, 2010 5:45 AM |
recipe7 said: People were saying the same thing about nvidia/ATI only a few years ago in the video card market. All it takes is a good generation or two of chips to turn it around. For competition's sake let's hope that this does happen.
Exactly. They will always be playing catch-up. I can't imagine when, or if, they can ever get ahead of Intel in the chip market. |
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vegasrez on March 12, 2010 6:17 AM |
I wonder why it took them so long |
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Serag on March 12, 2010 6:49 AM |
I'm sure AMD will put some serious competition up for Intel on this. |
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compdata on March 12, 2010 7:20 AM |
tengeta said: Exactly - Intel has been treading water with their Atom design as they don't want it to eat into the sales of higher end CPUs. But small low powered computers are a huge part of the future so i want to see these progress as much as possible.
Its competition, it gives Intel a reason to improve the Atom product line... thats a win-win in my book. |
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Kibaruk on March 12, 2010 8:45 AM |
I want next year to come then =( Dual core netbooks, that is what I want to see! |
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9Nails on March 12, 2010 9:27 AM |
Sorry, I'm not a big AMD fan so I don't know which Athlon/ATi hardware match up with the following sepcs, but what I want is Pentium 4 performance (say at 2.0 Ghz) with Nvidia GeForce 4 MX GPU capabilities. Make a low power package that matches those performance levels at a fair price and I'll buy. Toss in Windows 7 and a 10"-12" display and that's the perfect little couch machine/road warrior computer for me. |
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TorturedChaos on March 12, 2010 9:46 AM |
Man AMD has a lot of catch up to do..... But if they do get caught up competition is nothing but good for us consumers. |
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Vrmithrax on March 12, 2010 10:23 AM |
This could be a win in the long run for AMD, and for consumers. Yes, they are later in the game than the competition, but that's because they concentrated on their main markets (processors and GPUs) first, then applied their now-solid synergy between AMD and ATi to the mobile marketplace. Catchup, yes. But consider the implications of the package itself: the power of new generation Intel processor (like the Pinetrail platform) with the graphics punch of an Ion2, but without the imposed bottleneck between the systems that is a result of Intel's design choices. A true, fully integrated CPU/GPU platform for mobile applications will provide speed and efficiency boosts. THIS is the kind of thing that the whole AMD acquisition of ATi was aimed at, in the long run. |
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Archean on March 12, 2010 11:28 AM |
I think this is only the beginning, AMD correctly identified that in future, there will be a need and market for a fusion based solution. Hence, acquisition of ATI placed them in the right position, whereas, Intel ended up having to invest heavily in Larrabee (which is infact a strange case, as far as I know, the hardware is years ahead of software development, just like it was with IA64). Anyway, in the short run I think when AMD launches that product they will have slight edge on nVidia, and things should start to hot up once Intel is able to deliver its own solution, overcoming the above stated hurdles. However, interesting bit is, how nVidia will respond; because if the big two played out their cards rightly, and are able to deliver goods which can hold their own in the targeted segments of markets; they will be in trouble IMHO. |
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DryIce on March 12, 2010 12:06 PM |
At least there is a little progress. The whole hybrid cpu/gpu sounds like a great idea. |
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Chazz on March 12, 2010 12:45 PM |
I have a question. You say this is most likely to be their 32nm bobcat. But in their roadmap I thought the first netbook processor did not say what nm it will be. It's color code was unique. People have speculated that AMD would opt the 28nm process in order to match intel's extremely low atom pricing. Is there a new roadmap? |
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wagan8r on March 12, 2010 3:03 PM |
It's interesting that the first Fusion CPUs are going to be on the super low end in the CPU scale. It will be nice though to see some more options other than the Atom when it comes to netbooks. The Atom is the main reason why I haven't bought a netbook. |
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gary4gar on March 12, 2010 4:49 PM |
I hope they don't introduce a new socket, and make it compatible current AM3 sockets. That would be awesome! |
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boyese on March 12, 2010 5:56 PM |
about time AMD |
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