i know, i know, most of you are thinking "knock out of who"? amd can't compete at the high end and it doesn't look like it's going to be able to compete in that market segment anytime soon. well intel has decided to do with clarkdale what i had predicted it would do with clarkdale, namely use the on die gpu as a co-processor and offload some of the work from the cpu to be gpu accelerated. initially intel wasn't planning on doing this until sandy bridge came out but i had theorized that intel could do it with clarkdale as well and had predicted/hoped it would.

well i was right:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20091204232215_Intel_s_Next_Generation_Plat...ort_GPGPU.html

According to an Intel's spokesman, its next-generation code-named Clarkdale central processing unit with integrated graphics core will support video encoding using graphics procesising engines via a driver update. Despite lack of initial support of the feature, which will be added using a driver update, there is a confidence in the forthcoming Intel’s integrated desktop platform.
yes, initially it won't be activated by default and yes it needs a driver update and yes it will be only limited to video transcoding (i don't quite believe this, i will explain in a minute) but clarkdale is supposedly going to retail in the $100 range (rumors have 2 or 3 models, rangling from $80 to $120), will feature both hyper threading and turbo (i think the highest clocks are rumored to be over 3.2ghz) and here's the best part:

gpu acceleration, more than likely, won't be limited to those that explicitly support it, unlike ati's stream and nvidia's cuda or open cl. what i'm willing to bet the driver will do is intercept floating point operations and rather than have them executed on the cpu's hybrid fp/sse unit it will simply pass them off to the on die gpu for much faster processing. if i'm right and this the approach they take (which the need for a driver update implies), gpu acceleration will be automatic for any floating point operation and thus any app that makes use of floating point ops will benefit, thus the more fp intensive the task, the more speed advantage it will enjoy.

if this does end up being the case amd would find itself in serious trouble: no none gpu assisted cpu would be able to compete with clarkdale, especially at a $120 price point. hell, part of me thinks that intel would probably code some artifical limitation in the driver primarily because such a cpu has the real potential to cannibalize sales from intel's higher end none gpu assisted cpu's.

on the other hand intel may be willing to sacrifice sales of it's core i5/i7 line if it means effectively throwing a wet blanket on the nvidia cuda and amd stream parades.

2010 looks to be shaping up to be a very exciting year for video enthusiasts, i just hope that driver is released shortly after launch because i have a load of video that i need to work on.