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Jun. 3, 2010

AMD showcased its long-awaited APU (accelerated processing unit) yesterday at the Computex trade show in Taipei, Taiwan.

A fusion processor is neither a CPU nor a GPU, but in AMD parlance an APU — an accelerated processing unit. An APU not only integrates a GPU and a CPU on the same die, but can also include video processing and other application-specific accelerators.

"When AMD formally launches the AMD Fusion family of APUs, scheduled for the first half of next year, we expect the PC experience to evolve dramatically," said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager of the AMD Product Group in a prepared statement.

The showcase was done in partnership with Microsoft's OEM group vice president Steven Guggenheimer, and it involved a Windows 7 computer based on a AMD Fusion processor running APU-accelerated Internet Explorer 8 and Direct-X 11 rendering and special effects.

AMD's new Fusion effort was first announced in October of 2006, with the moniker APU first bestowed a few months later. Originally, Fusion processors were expected to begin to appear in late 2008 or early 2009.

At the time of its initial announcement, AMD said that the prime goal of Fusion was "to provide the best customer experience in a world increasingly reliant upon 3D graphics, digital media and high-performance computing."

The past four years have seen an explosion in digital media, so this isn't surprising in any way. AMD gives as one example a comScore study that found that in the U.S. alone, over 83 percent of Internet users watched a total of over 28 billion Internet-based videos in February of 2010.

Whether AMD's Fusion processors can take the lead in feeding what is increasingly becoming HD-level video hunger will be answered not only by their ability to produce high-performance, cost-effective, versatile chips, but also whether or not there will be the software, tools and specialized hardware to enable them.

AMD has also launched the Fusion Fund, an investment program designed to spur Fusion-related product development.

"We want to reward innovation," writes John Taylor, Fusion director of marketing at AMD. "It's the lifeblood of our company and the foundation on which the computing industry is built. With that in mind, projects we would consider might include a range of next-generation and accelerated computing solutions designed to work with AMD Fusion APU products, including application software and tool development, unique device designs or PC components."

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Source: American Micro Devices.

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