AMD's Fusion Processors Are Designed to Be as Fast as Discrete GPUs

A high-ranking executive of Advanced Micro Devices said Friday that while the so-called accelerated processing units (APU), which combine x86 cores, memory controller and graphics processor on the same piece of silicon, will tangibly rise the bar for performance of built-in graphics, they will not destroy the market of discrete graphics processing units (GPUs).

"AMD’s APUs are designed to deliver exceptional performance – and we believe this will be readily apparent when compared to integrated graphics products available from the competition. Some of our APUs, by sheer performance alone, are expected to be faster than some discrete GPUs on the market. As our GPU cores improve, you can expect our APU graphics performance to similarly improve," said Godfrey Cheng, the director of client technology unit at AMD.

In the first half of next year AMD plans to launch the code-named Llano accelerating processing unit (APU) with up to four Phenom II-class x86 cores and with up to ATI Radeon HD 5000-class 480 stream processors. Potentially, Llano offers higher computing performance than code-named named Redwood chip (which has up to 400 SPs), which means that AMD will have to refresh entry-level lineup otherwise Llano will likely stop sales Cedar-based products.