
Monolithic on-die
We were quite shocked to learn that Intel
might be the first company to ever launch two GPUs on the same die. Not only
does it look like Intel might be the first with monolithically integrated with
the CPU and have Fusion before AMD, bit it might be the first “graphics” company to
ever launch two GPUs on the same die.
According to Intel’s plans that were
revealed to partners and industry insiders Sandy Bridge, brand new 32nm
architecture will have one to two graphics cores on a monolithic die.
Intel will also let you connect discrete
graphics via PCIe 16X and even SLI / Crossfire should be possible with 2x
8X PCIe slots. This is likely to happen on desktop boards rather than notebook.
At this time we are not aware that Nvidia
and ATI will launch their dual GPU solutions on a single chip, but if you look a
high-end card, for example a Fermi, it card has 512 shader cores and if you cut it
in half you get a mainstream card. With this in mind, ATI and Nvidia practically make high-end chips out of four low end GPUs.