AMD shows the world's first Fusion demo

AMD will invest in companies developing products that use the Fusion APUs

Ontario and Llano, AMD's first accelerated processing unit (APU) products, will be available in the first half of 2011.

AMD gave the first public demonstration of its future technology at Computex, describing APUs as combining a CPU and GPU in a single-die processor, and designed with HD and 3D video in mind.

Rick Bergman, AMD's products group senior vice president, showed a Dx11 video of an Aliens versus Predators game demo. He said that with an APU built in, the game's high quality graphics will be seen in the future on netbook-like products.

Bergman revealed that his company is talking to customers about Fusion and giving demonstrations at Computex after "a couple of years of talking" about the concept.

Llano, he explains, is for mainstream customers, while Ontario is for new form factors that need full HD display capabilities but with low power.

Bergman describes the Fusion APU as being as significant a development in computer architectures as the CPU and GPU.

He went on to describe Fusion as having "a multi-core x86, with a DX11 highly parallel capable device, hooked through a high speed bus and giving those two processing elements access to a high speed memory, all in one single die".

Regarding another demonstration video, he explained that what was being shown were graphics running at 60 frames per second.

He also announced the AMD Fusion Fund, a financing vehicle for AMD to make investments in companies developing products that will use the Fusion APUs.