AMD says "Fusion" chip looks good, but is 2011 too late?

John Morris - ZDNet

AMD appears to be on track to release its first “Fusion” processor that combines an x86 CPU core with a graphics processor on a single silicon chip sometime in 2011. The first so-called APU, or Accelerated Processing Unit, is code-named Llano and will be manufactured using 32nm process technology.

In an interview with the enthusiast site X-bit Labs, Chekib Akrout, an executive who heads up AMD’s central engineering group, said the company was happy with the results so far. “The current schedule is for 2011 introduction so it is still early, but because we are using an existing CPU core for the first product and not making big changes in the memory structure right away, we feel quite confident about where we are with Llano,” he told X-bit Labs.

Last week, a hardware site in China, Expreview.com, posted what appears to be a detailed AMD notebook roadmap. One slide shows the Sabine notebook platform with Llano APU arriving in 2011, on the heels of a 45nm dual-core Caspian chip this year and a 45nm quad-core Champlain CPU in 2010. These are all designed for mainstream notebooks, though Llano, which will have up to four CPU cores, will also be used in mainstream desktops. AMD currently manufactures desktop and server chips at 45nm, but it has not yet released a 45nm mobile processor.

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