AMD Fuses Processor & GPU, Shipping Next Year

AMD’s crashed Intel’s party by setting up a demo suite at a hotel next door to the Moscone Center, home of Intel’s IDF 2010. Bob Grim, an AMD exec, is on hand to talk about Fusion.

In the near future, AMD and its partners will be selling PCs with APUs, which puts discrete graphics and x86 processing on a single die. Early versions of AMD’s APUs are designed to compete with Intel’s Core i3 products, which means they’ll likely show up first in budget notebooks.

AMD is producing an 18-watt TDP APU and 9-watt TDP. The more powerful APU will make its way into notebooks and desktops, while the more power efficient APU will ship inside of netbooks and small form factor PCs. AMD had a design mockup on display running the 19-watt APU and it was cool to the touch, even after running games and graphic-intensive content all morning.

AMD generally goes after Intel’s lackluster integrated graphics performance during demos and today was no exception. The AMD APU mockup performed much better than the 15″ Dell notebook with a Core i5 processor and integrated graphics. In the U.S., most notebooks are still sold without GPUs, which means they have a less than optimal gaming and graphics experience. Gamers aren’t the only ones that need to worry about graphics these days as visual candy is working its way into more and more applications, including the browser.

In the above video an AMD rep runs an Amazon demo from the Internet Explorer 9 test drive site. As you can see, the APU outperforms the Intel Core i5 and integrated graphics combo.