AMD today during its analyst's day conference call unveiled more details of its next-generation Fusion CPU and GPU hybrid. Early mentions of Fusion first appeared shortly after AMD's acquisition of ATI Technologies was completed a few months ago. AMD is expected to debut its first Fusion processor in the late 2008 to early 2009 timeframe.

The GPU and CPU appear to be separate cores on a single die according to early diagrams of AMD's Fusion architecture. CPU functionality will have access to its own cache while GPU functionality will have access to its own buffers. Joining together the CPU and GPU is a crossbar and integrated memory controller. Everything is connected via HyperTransport links. From there the Fusion processor will have direct access to system memory that appears to be shared between the CPU and GPU. It doesn't appear the graphics functionality will have its own frame buffer.

While Fusion is a hybrid CPU and GPU architecture, AMD will continue to produce discrete graphics solutions. AMD still believes there's a need for discrete graphics cards for high end users and physics processing.