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AMD's acquisition of graphics chipmaker ATI should bear some major collaborative fruit on the laptop side in early 2009, when the company is expected to debut its newest mobile platform, code-named Shrike. The platform's centerpiece: a unified CPU, GPU, and chipset that form one "accelerated processing unit" (APU). AMD anticipates that Shrike will provide a better graphics and media experience and (because only one chip is drawing power) extended battery life for laptop users. A presentation delivered to analysts in late 2007 [PDF] also notes that Shrike will support UWB for high-bandwidth data transfer.
On the desktop side, AMD has more than just multicore ambitions in 2009. We expect that its line of 45-nanometer desktop chips will expand to include two, three, four, and as many as eight cores. It also has a design in the works, code-named Bulldozer, that will allow up to 16 cores slated for 2010. By this point, we expect quad-core chips will closing in on ubiquity in budget and mainstream CPUs, with dual-core bringing up the rear on only the bottom-end of the desktop market.
Core density is not the only change AMD on the horizon, however. By the end of 2009 we expect to see the first iterations of AMD's Fusion design, which will incorporate the graphics processing core directly into the same silicon as the CPU itself. We do not expect this change will bring about the end of the graphics card market as it exists today. But as the only vendor able to tap into the knowledge of design teams seasoned in both CPU and performance GPU design--and no, we don't count Intel's integrated graphics chip as a "performance" part--AMD's Fusion core may be unique in its ability to provide powerful graphics and general processing power in a newly efficient package.