Fusion

AMD asserts that its new line of processor-linked gpu's or graphically-uninhibiting processors are neither video card nand/nor processor, but something new altogether which they call an Accelerated Processing Unit (APU). This nomenclature makes sense because AMD is producing single chips that perform both traditional processing tasks AND graphical processing tasks, instead of using two separate chips (a CPU and GPU). Source7 With this new hardware standard comes a proposed software standard, OpenCL. OpenCL is a programming standard released for free by AMD which makes programming for multiple core CPUs, in addition to a GPU, easier as well as programming for an APU. This move makes sense since the burden of proof is on AMD to show off their new technology. Source8 The Fusion technology is available now in low-performance machines such as netbooks. There don't seem to be any high-end versions of fusion out yet, but it will probably only be a matter of time until AMD comes out with something interesting if not practical. But for now, a valid criticism is that the Fusion technology is just a glorified integrated graphics chipset, which have been around for years, and which Intel has released a buffed version of called Sandy Bridge. Maybe so, but Fusion is relatively new and Sandy Bridge isn't a new hardware architecture; AMD is doing something and they haven't revealed the whole story yet. *Source9*