Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 22nd Aug 2007 17:11 UTC, submitted by maxton
Phil Hester, AMD's chief technology officer, stopped by the Hot Chips conference here at Stanford University on Tuesday to talk a little more about Fusion, AMD's plan to integrate a graphics processor and PC processor onto the same chip. By the time the chip is ready around 2009, Hester thinks the growing explosion of video and 3D graphics on PCs these days will require an affordable chip that still delivers great graphics performance.
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Member since:
2006-06-17
"First, there's the die space: top-end modern GPUs are often larger than the current general purpose CPU available at the time. "
That's because different manufacturing process, as the CPUs are usually much more advanced in this manner and therefore occupying less space. Of course you are also right, because nowadays GPUs tend to have many more transistors than CPUs.
"a huge amount of waste heat in a small amount of space, so the thermal envelope is another major factor in what's feasible to put in the same package."
You again forgot about manufacturing process, which if more advanced, helps to produce less heat. And maintaining one cooling system for both GPU+CPU is generally a good idea, too, as it allows to use only a single but more advanced and efficent cooling system (e.g. some advanced and expensive heatpipe) instead of two simplier and cheaper, but equalling the cost of that advanced one when summed up.
Edited 2007-08-22 23:18