Six core CPUs and CPU/GPU Fusion coming in 2010/2011
Two detail-packed leak photos turned up in Japan recently. They are pictures taken of AMD's milestone roadmap, for desktop and notebook parts, stretching into 2011. As always with CPU development, there are some big plans and changes ahead.
Probably the most exciting CPU of the bunch is AMD's upcoming hexa-core (6 core) CPU. Codenamed Thuban, it will be a 45nm part, guessed to be clocked at about 2.8GHz.
On the graphics side of things, we can expect 2011 to be the year of HD 5000 series; HD 6000 won't be touching down until 2011. Codenamed Northern Island, HD 6000 will be a 32nm design.
The boxes in orange on both roadmaps show AMD's new 'Fusion' designs. The Fusion chips will be CPU/GPU hybrid chips. While we don't expect Fusion to be able to cut through many DX11 games, we can guess that it will be a cost effective way of delivering integrated graphics for the needs of the mainstream.
forums
Aside from the GPU front, moving to 6-core processors will also be quite good for them. Moving towards combined CPU/GPU processors will also help. And, finally doing something with their mobile line will be fantastic.
The downside to this, however, is that they won't be moving to 32nm for quite a while; Intel will be making that jump in a few months. Aside from that, they've already lost a lot in the mobile segment, so recovering won't be easy.