santyhammer, what u said about GPUs dominating CPUs isnt completely correct, GPUs (and other processors) will never take over the CPU, no matter what happens we do need CPUs . I have been reading through AMD plans, and i have found something interseting that might please you(maybe me and the others). These two qoutes share something in common
1) FROM PHIL HESTER
"When referring to the future goals for AMD's architecture, the only example Phil Hester provided for FPU Extensions to AMD64 was the idea of introducing extensions that would accelerate 3D rendering. We got the impression that these extensions would be similar to a SSEn type of extension, but more specifically focused on usage models like 3D rendering.
Through the use of extensions to the AMD64 architecture, Hester proposed that future multi-core designs may be able to treat general purpose cores as almost specialized hardware, but refrained from committing to the use of Cell SPE-like specialized hardware in future AMD microprocessors. We tend to agree with Hester's feelings on this topic, as he approached the question from a very software-centric standpoint; the software isn't currently asking for specialized hardware, it is demanding higher performance general purpose cores, potentially augmented with some application specific instructions. "
2) From that Arstechnica article about Fusion
"To support CPU/GPU integration at either level of complexity (i.e. the modular core level or something deeper), AMD has already stated that they'll need to add a graphics-specific extension to the x86 ISA. Indeed, a future GPU-oriented ISA extension may form part of the reason for the company's recently announced "close to metal" (CTM) initiative. By exposing the low-level hardware of its ATI GPUs to coders, AMD can accomplish two goals. First, they can get the low-level ISA out there and in use, thereby creating a "legacy" code base for it and moving it further toward being a de facto standard. Second, they can get feedback from the industry on what coders want to see in a graphics-specific ISA.
Both of these steps pave the way for the introduction of GPU-specific extensions to the x86 ISA, extensions that eventually will probably be modeled to some degree on the ISA for the existing ATI hardware. These extensions will start life as a handful of instructions that help keep the CPU and GPU in sync and aware of each other as they share a common socket, frontside bus, and memory controller. A later, stream-processor-oriented extension could turn x86 into a full-blown GPU ISA."
both of these quotes talk about adding some kind of stream processor\GPU instructions to AMD's processors. In my opinion this is what will happen, this will start at the late 2008/early 2009 timeline.
1) AMD releases Fusion, and adds simple gfx instructions to their Fusion chips, to make the CPU communicate easily with the on die GPU.
2)AMD improves Fusion chips and adds more instructions, the CPU starts to be able to process light-weight gfx workloads.
3) Developers start accepting AMD's Fusion as an industry standard, Intel forced to copy AMD, Fusion begins to go high-end.
4) More improvements follow
5)Eventually, the CPU ends up with a lot of gfx related instructions, including stream processing (shading) and the ability to do shading,thus the CPU cores start to be treated as sort of specialized hardware, just like Phil Hester said.
And since the CPU will have shader instructions, it will also be able to process non-graphics workloads. So the CPU and GPU will both converge at some point of time.
So I'll call it a tie.