joe
Time to market absolutely sucks if it indeed is end of 2009.
Consider it makes no sense doing it before 45 nm, and it also makes no sense to release it as first 45nm silicon from a manufacturing point of view, you end up at H2/09 (still optimistic in my book). Besides, it is not only the manufacturing side preventing Fusion to arrive sooner: Two years for design-development of such complex arch and another year for getting silicon ready for prouduction is an agenda as tight as possible at all, imo.
Wrt to the AtI-merger, whether Fusion arrives by end of this decade or beginning of the next is beside the point imo. The point is whether they can stem this at all within this timeframe. Without AtI it would be close to hopeless to get there before mid of next decade.
In the meantime, there is options for intermediate steps: Taking grafics onto the chip by means of MCP to allow for integrating Chipset/SB to a single die, e.g., if pad-limitations allow for the latter to take ten dollars cost out of the platform. Maybe this die could be taken onto the MCM as well, in the next step.
Bottom line, this industry has ever been about integration, which will eventually end in a SoC. Not the question if, but when. From this stance, the question is not whether AMD could afford taking Ati, but rather if they could have afforded not to take it.
K.
Facts are irrelevant to the emotional brain
