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AMD's European channel marketing manager, Richard Baker, told our sister publication Custom PC that 'there's a blur between general purpose processing and specialist processing, and I expect to see things like combined products in particular markets. So, in much the same way as a floating point unit is now integrated into the processor, I would expect to see joint single pieces of silicon for certain specialist markets too.'

Could this mean integrated graphics inside the CPU? We asked Baker, who replied that he wasn't 'talking about anything that's been specifically announced yet, but it's the sort of thing that could reasonably be expected to happen. However, the sorts of markets are going to be low cost markets. You're not going to integrate some steaming great big quad-core

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CrossFire engine into a CPU; that would be crazy. But if you're looking at entry level parts for emerging markets, where a very simple GPU could be integrated, then that could be possible.'

ATi was slightly more evasive around the subject, and Chris Hook from the graphics company said that 'it's very difficult to comment on future platforms and whether they're going to be one piece of silicon, or two or five. It's just very premature at the moment, and a lot of these details are going to be ironed out during the next 120 days.'

It's fair to say that a CPU with integrated graphics isn't going to excite any PC gamers, unless they're particularly into Minesweeper, but with ATi's recently announced CrossFire physics technology, it's possible that AMD could produce a specialist CPU for gaming physics calculations. We asked Baker if this could be a possibility, and he said, 'yeah, I couldn't commit to anything specific at this time though.'

You might think that these hybrid products will be several years in the making, but Baker optimistically claims that we could be seeing new products as early as next year. 'Some people have speculated that it will take three years for anything to come of this,' claimed Baker, and that it'll take ages before AMD and ATi work closely enough together to form new products, but we're talking the timescale of around a year.'