http://www.techradar.com/news/computing ... or--653535



Do we know much about hybrid chips at this point in terms of the heat given off? The PS3 often got toasty before they scaled it down...

IBM are only one of the companies that make Cell CPU's - Cell BE was a joint IBM, Sony & Toshiba project. Whilst IBM made Cell CPU's for their server stuff, it is mainly Toshiba and Sony making the CPU for PS3. IBM were working on a bigger Cell, but they gave up on it.

As for graphics and CPU on one chip, other than for small devices, I don't see much point. Mobile devices are still a growing market though.

Only rumours that AMD didn't have enough thermal headroom to do it with their current die size.

I take it Intel will eventually shrink it down and make them look silly?

I suppose the hybrids are the future for AMD/ATI?

Just looking at the history of Intel chips, it's always been the way.

I remember when an '87 floating point co-pro was a very expensive add-on for the '86. It wasn't available on-die until the 486, and even then only on the DX models.

I think DSP type architecture on-die is inevitable. The potential performance gains vastly outway those of using the same real estate on generic cores. We've had a few DSP type additions to the '86 extended instruction set in the past, so it's not hard to imagine.