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AMD Fusion

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Soldato
Joined
7 Jul 2009
Posts
16,234
Location
Newcastle/Aberdeen
AMD Fusion OR Swift

The next generation of AMD chips. They're not releasing much information, but they have been talking about it for a while. We do know that it's the merging of AMD and ATI, meaning that there will be a CPU and GPU in the same unit. Here's speculation:

  • It may use 22nm manufacuring, as opposed to 32nm which the Intel Core i9 will use.
  • There may be up to 16 seperate cores on the chip :o
  • It seems to have been repeatedly delayed, first planned for Q1 2009 or earlier, then 2010 but latest evidence seems to suggest that it will be 2011 before we'll see this monster in action. You can expect more information before then though.

So discuss, criticise or bring new information to the table. I'm holding out for more information before i decide if i should get this or the Core i9. It looks amazing, but are people just over stretching their imaginations? Could it ever live up to all this hype and expectation? Only time will tell.
 
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I love hearing about this kinda stuff; I think the future of computing is going to be very exciting.

I just hope they don't get so far that they don't need to be built anymore. That's half of the fun for me :P
 
According to somebody, computers always, every time without fail get two times faster every two years. I doubt there will ever be a point when we will have to stop making hardware better (unless we perfect Organic computing, maybe) because of Wirth's law. Harsh, but it's true.

Wirth said:
Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster.
Click to expand...

Also, just found out that it may have been renamed Swift, which would explain why it's on their site as a 'philosophy'.
 
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16 cores, nice, but first off we need software that can take full advantage of the cores we have now.
What appart from encoding software uses more than 2 or in some cases 1 core at a time.
 
Well the advantage of course with multiple cores is that you can do more at once. But yeah, we need more programs that can take advantage of all of the cores possible.
 
Programmers are just going to have to step up to the plate. There are limitations on how fast you can make a single thread execute.

And the law you are thinking of is Moore's Law
 
Yeah, that's it. But Wirth's law is also true. Remember when Windows 3.1 was new? It loaded probably faster than Vista or 7 would today, and you would never hope to fill a 2 MB Hard Drive. Programming is going downhill, Linux is a step in the right direction but still...
 
milkinc13 said:
16 cores, nice, but first off we need software that can take full advantage of the cores we have now.
What appart from encoding software uses more than 2 or in some cases 1 core at a time.
Click to expand...

The new M-Space AMD architecture allows you to combine core's to run a single thread.

Dont think you will be able to run 1 thread on 16 cores tho :p, mabe 2-3 cores per thread.
 
One thread across several cores doesn't sound that hard. use one core to split the code evenly between two others, using three cores to execute code at twice the speed one core could. Doing this in hardware though, I can see it being very difficult to achieve. Doing it so that the software doesn't error out, I wish amd/ati luck.

I couldn't get windows 98se running on my computer when I tried to a few months back. Shame, driver support is the problem.

Programming isn't going downhill, it's economics. It is cheaper to write bad code than it is to write good code, as it takes less time and you pay programmers by the hour. You need an operating system that is fast enough that people will use it, you don't need one written perfectly. So m$ write vista as economically as possible, and the majority just cope with it.

This is where linux has an advantage. Programming time is free, so it is viable to write the best code you can. The effort which goes into the linux kernel is exceptional, I've seen very caustic comments aimed at C++ for being easier to write in at the cost of execution speed.
 
Society is pretty stable, I don't think I'd change anything. Democracy isn't doing as well as it did in the past, but it's working well enough.

If you need to change everyone's personality to make a new political system work, then perhaps the change isn't worthwhile :)

I can't offer a source either, but I believe the technology is called bulldozer. I've seen it talked about before, but nothing concrete, and no eta
 
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