AMD: Southern Islands GPUs arrive later this year

Advanced Micro Devices confirmed on Tuesday at its AMD Fusion Development Summit (AFDS) that it would release a new breed of graphics processing units (GPUs) later this year. Apparently, AMD's code-named Southern Island graphics processing units are on-track to be launched in 2011. While it is not completely clear what kind of peculiarities of next-generation graphics processors will be revealed at the summit, it is highly likely that going forward both AMD and its arch-rival Nvidia will attempt to make GPUs more programmable and better suitable not only for graphics processing, but also for complex computing.

Later during this year AMD is projected to release its first graphics processing units made using 28nm process technology code-named Southern Islands. The SI family is projected to support DirectX 11 functionality along with architectural improvements and some new features.