by Larry Richman
January 7, 2007 3:07 PM

Windows Vista RTM Lab Session 9 --

AMD has been waiting for 5 years for the introduction of Windows Vista, and has been developing the platform to maximize its performance. AMD's Patrick Moorhead showed us how much they have done and how committed they are to helping enthusiasts with multitasking. Console gaming has accelerated multi-core development.

This summer AMD will introduce a "real," native quad-core processor. This is native because it's not just 2 chips glued together as present "quad-core" processors are.

The merger of AMD and ATI has made the integration with Windows Vista even greater. ATI graphics are used internally at MS. They have many cards certified for Vista.

Ocur is a new technology and card from ATI which some have spilled the beans about, but you'll hear all about it tonight. Robert McLaws wrote a nice piece about it.

This shows the progression which leads to the inevitable integration of GPU and CPU:

FP Integration 1989
MMX 1997
SSE 1999
64-bit extensions 2003
3D Graphics 2008+

Within the next 5 years, watch for Fusion -- the first AMD accelerated processor combining CPU and GPU. This is, of course, made possible by the merger of AMD and ATI.