VR-Zone

AMD's Fusion project has been nearly four years in the making. Ever since AMD merged with ATI, we have been hearing of a CPU merged with a GPU. AMD later went on to term this an APU - Accelerated Processing Unit. Following years of delays, AMD is finally demonstrating its first Fusion chip - Llano - to the public.

Tweaktown have captured the Fusion demonstration. AMD have a working APU at Computex running Aliens vs Predator DX11 with fairly impressive visuals. While it is hard to judge from a compressed Youtube video, the Tweaktown reviewer certainly seems to be impressed.

It is true that Intel beat AMD to the idea of having a CPU and an IGP in one package, Intel's DX10 IGP is nowhere near the capabilities of the GPU part of the Fusion APU. In fact, it is fairly useless for any kind of gaming. At the same time, Fusion's CPU part will pale in comparison to Intel's Sandy Bridge - which will also feature an IGP and a CPU on one die.

It is clear that CPU+GPU are moving to a single die. While Llano is an exciting product in its own right, it will only be from the second generation Fusion - which will presumably feature a Bulldozer architecture CPU - that AMD's Fusion project will pay dividends. Till then, Intel will have to put all their Larrabee research and more to keep up with AMD's stellar graphics division.

Fusion in its Llano form is set to hit stores early in 2011.

You can watch the video at Tweaktown.