AMD shows off new Fusion processors, and HP, Microsoft and ARM support

The signage is coming down and delegates are returning home, but the impact of the AMD Fusion developer's conference will be felt for quite some time to come.

Over the last week the company has laid out plans for a new series of Fusion processors that look to merge GPU and CPU operations, announced new deals with HP and Microsoft on cooperation and joined with ARM in pushing open standards. But it saved the biggest shift for last – a complete reworking of its graphics processing unit (GPU) with a radical new architecture.

The next-generation GPU architecture will be the biggest shake-up in AMD's technology for over a decade. The company has relied on MIMD (multiple-instruction-stream, multiple-data-stream) architecture for its graphics processors pretty much since its inception. This technology offers a number of advantages, but is fundamentally limited by the need for a strong complier and in processing ability.

Chief technical officer Eric Demers outlined the new platform, which would shift to SIMD (single-instruction-stream, multiple-data-stream)-based architecture with MIMD capabilities, and would offer huge performance increases with boosts to multi-threading bandwidth.

Best of all, older software would not need to be rewritten, he told developers at the conference. The first system using the new architecture should be out within a year and AMD has a roadmap going forward for the next three years.

"I hope you'll walk out of here and say to yourself that AMD really has direction going forward," he said.

The new architecture is a further step beyond the other big hardware news of the conference – the launch of the A-Series Fusion chips, formerly codenamed Llano. The chips are what AMD is calling applications processing units, since they blur the distinction between CPU and GPU operation.

"It's an interesting concept, the blurring of the lines between the GPU and CPU and saying neither matter any more," Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, told V3.co.uk. "It's great utopian PR speak. But the two companies that AMD has to deal with on the competitive front are Intel and Nvidia, and both of those have a firm investment in advanced CPU and GPU technology."