AMD may have seemingly taken a back seat to Intel, in terms of the desktop processor performance crown but you can be sure they plan a whole lot of catch-up in the race for the future platform evolutions that will meld general purpose compute architectures with specialized core engines.  A few weeks ago, we told you about AMD's plans to position their corporate brand around their upcoming Fusion architecture and now it appears AMD has also launched a Fusion site with a myriad of multi-media content offerings, including images, video and this white paper.  In various bits of collateral, AMD speaks of the Fusion architecutre as not only the integration of traditional general-purpose multi-core architecutres along with graphics but also other core and engines to tackle additonal specialized tasks. 

Source:  AMD

Proclaiming that 2008 will be the dawn of the heterogeneous multi-core processors, AMD states that scaling the number of traditional CPU cores to improve application performance isn't the most efficient path. 

Instead, AMD's vision of combining not only CPU and GPU resources but providing on-board engines for specialized functions and external links via HyperTransport, will offer orders of magnitude higher throughput and power efficiency.  From the white paper...

High-end video conferencing systems available today deliver an experience so realistic that it looks like the person you are conferencing with is actually sitting on the other side of the table. However, this type of conferencing capability is generally limited to enterprise organizations with financial resources that can support this level of conferencing. The accelerated computing framework provides a pathway toward creating high-quality video conferencing on the desktop at a reasonable cost to end users.

It seems like AMD means busines with respect to the Fusion campaign and they've pulled out all the stops with a series of videos plugging their mantra.  There are of course a few glowing endorsements from current AMD customers as well. Finally, you can also download the AMD "Fusion for Gaming" utility here, that we've previewed for you recently.   

Designed to help optimize your PC for smoother, more responsive game play in the latest PC games with the touch of a button, the AMD Fusion for Gaming utility helps achieve the performance edge previously only available to highly technical enthusiasts. It works by temporarily shutting down background processes and intensifying processor performance with AMD Boost. That means you can keep all the features of Microsoft® Windows Vista® ready for when you need them, but turn them off when you are ready to get down to serious business – gaming.1

We haven't spent too much time with the application just yet but will report back to you when we know more about its relative usefulness.

I been always a strong supported for AMD. and for my understanding they always have made a product that is solid. Obviously their competition is Intel and everyone compared them a lot. but they are not in the same class meaning, they will make processor/video cards that are usefull for average people. AMD has always been a company that kind of represent the "average joe" from its fabulous k6 cpu to the k7.

Obviously time has changed and AMD did a major reconstruction and has work a lot with ATI to get their perfomance better. and they have done it!

This could be huge for low cost computers. If they can keep the cost below and the performance above intels onboard gpu solutions.

/agree Bob. Sounds like a serious consideration for all kinds of portable devices. Microsoft: Where's your portable Xbox? :)

I can't wait for something to be released so the guys here can tell us how it actually performs in comparison to traditional systems.