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Canada's General Fusion has received $1.2 million in venture funding to conduct further research on its fusion reactors, according to VentureWire.

The company's ultimate plan is to build small fusion reactors that can produce around 100 megawatts of power. The plants would cost around $50 million. That could allow the company to generate electricity at about 4 cents per kilowatt hour, relatively low. (By contrast, roughly $250 million was spent on a 64-megawatt solar thermal plant in Las Vegas recently.)

General Fusion has adopted the Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) model. In this scenario, an electric current is generated in a conductive cavity containing lithium and a plasma. The electric current produces a magnetic field and the cavity is collapsed, which results in a massive temperature spike.

The lithium breaks down into helium and tritium. Tritium, an unstable form of hydrogen, is separated and then mixed with deuterium, another form of hydrogen. The two fuse and make helium, a reaction that releases energy that can be harvested. So in short, lithium, a fairly inexpensive and plentiful metal, gets converted to helium in a reaction that generates lots of power and leaves only a harmless gas as a byproduct.

In theory. Conducting those reactions isn't easy. MTF has an advantage over other fusion techniques in that the plasma only has to stay at thermonuclear temperatures (150 million degrees Celsius) for a microsecond for a reaction to occur, according to the General Fusion's Web site.

But research is still ongoing. Los Alamos National Labs is currently conducting research.

Millions have been invested in fusion and nuclear projects over the last decade. Recently, Tri-Alpha Energy, out of the University of California Irvine, landed $40 million in VC funds.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--AMD's pretty sure we all want better graphics on our PCs, and knowing us, they're pretty sure we don't want to cough up a lot of money to get it.

Phil Hester, AMD's chief technology officer, stopped by the Hot Chips conference here at Stanford University on Tuesday to talk a little more about Fusion, AMD's plan to integrate a graphics processor and PC processor onto the same chip. By the time the chip is ready around 2009, Hester thinks the growing explosion of video and 3D graphics on PCs these days will require an affordable chip that still delivers great graphics performance.

"It's not about the silicon, it's about the applications," Hester said. He stepped back in chip history to liken the Fusion project to Intel's decision to integrate a floating-point processor into the 486 chip. There's always a cost trade-off when you integrate something new into a processor that was once done separately. But when enough applications need the extra performance, it's easier to justify adding some cost to dramatically improve performance.

That's the plan for Fusion. It's not going to replace high-end discrete graphics chips coveted by gamers, and it's not going to deliver the ultimate in CPU performance, Hester said. But AMD thinks that integrating the GPU will be essential around the end of the decade because so many applications--games and videos, for starters--will want to latch onto the GPU architecture and because the relative performance of a GPU is way beyond the CPU right now, he said.

GPUs and CPUs have traditionally been designed with different priorities in mind. GPUs are designed to sling code in and out as quickly as possible and are good at working with parallelized code, the current issue for multicore processors. Traditional CPUs tend to focus more on code quality and solving problems in sequential order. There's a distinct advantage to having both types of processors on a single chip, so long as AMD can ensure that developers can write code for Fusion and the company clears the integration hurdles, Hester said.

Lots of decisions need to be made. Should PCs with chips like Fusion use DDR memory or graphics DDR memory? AMD's integrated memory controller architecture will require a decision one way or another. How will AMD open up the GPU so more applications can be written to take advantage of its parallel-friendly architecture? AMD hasn't worked out all the details just yet, but open-source elements could help bridge the gap between applications and the hardware.

It doesn't make sense to integrate everything onto a chip, but sometimes it's worth it to take the plunge, Hester said. AMD is betting that it can improve overall graphics performance and still give developers a way to take advantage of the GPU architecture for other tasks, while holding down the fort with traditional application performance. It has two years to work out the details.

VMware is in the news these days for two related reasons.

First, VMware Fusion for Mac OS X recently went on sale. Fusion enables Mac users to run Windows and other operating systems simultaneously with their regular Mac applications, which pretty much solves the old problem of ... Read more

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--AMD's Fusion chip will come in two varieties, one for PCs and servers and another for consumer electronics devices.

Bulldozer is the code name for the Fusion chip that will be designed for everything from servers to handhelds, said Phil Hester, AMD's chief technology officer. Bobcat is the name for a sub 10-watt x86 chip that AMD believes can power ultramobile PCs, cell phones and existing consumer electronics chips using the ARM or MIPS architectures.

You call in a bulldozer when you need a lot of earth moved in a short amount of time, Hester said. That's the idea for Bulldozer, in that it's the design that AMD wants to form the basis of its server and PC chips by the end of the decade. Bulldozer will be part of the "Falcon" PC platform that also includes an integrated memory controller, a graphics processor, cache memory and a PCI Express controller.

Bobcats, however, can be found in back yards and smaller spaces where you don't want to use a shovel, but you can't get away with a bulldozer. (I've always wanted to tool around in a Bobcat for a few hours.) These chips represent AMD's hope for getting x86 chips into handheld devices.

While x86 chips rule the PC market, it's really hard to find one in a smart phone. Both Intel and AMD are very interested in figuring out how to get their silicon inside this fast-growing part of the tech industry, and Hester thinks x86's time will come as software for handsets grows more powerful and the chips themselves become more power-efficient.

Hester also revealed a few more details about Sandtiger, the code name for AMD's 2009 server chip disclosed earlier in the morning. Sandtiger will use between 8 and 16 Bulldozer cores, but AMD might build smaller versions to take advantage of certain cases in which 4 cores make more sense, he said.

LeapFrog's FLY Fusion comes with 64MB of built-in memory and is expandable to 128MB.

(Credit: LeapFrog)

LeapFrog's original FLY pentop computer garnered some attention when it was announced in late 2005, but truth be told, we kind of forgot about it after it came out. Well, the company has a new FLY--the FLY Fusion ($80)--and, as you might expect from a second-generation product, it's sleeker and has more features.

While the product isn't due to ship until early August, it can already be pre-ordered at Amazon. Here are the highlights, according to the site:

• With the FLY Fusion Pentop Computer, everything you write on FLY Paper is automatically scanned and digitized.
• With the tap of your FLY Fusion pentop computer, you can interact with your notes, get instant feedback and step-by-step help, even play MP3s and games, all on paper!
• FLY Fusion Pentop Computer includes: rechargeable battery, memory expansion slot, FLY Fusion installation CD, FLY Notebook, FLY World Application, 13 FLY Fusion Games, and USB Cable.
• Recommended age range fifth to ninth grades.

I saw a quick demo today of the Fusion (not to be confused with the Gillette Fusion razor) and was impressed enough to request a review sample (it should arrive soon). Truth is, I wasn't much a note-taker in school, and this thing made me wish I could go back and do it all over again. With this kind of technology at my disposal, I would have been a note-taking machine. Or at least I could have saved some of my better doodles.

Tri Alpha Energy, which hopes to commercialize nuclear fusion technology, has raised $40 million from Venrock Associates and others, according to VentureWire. (Subscription required)

The company, which grew out of the University of California at Irvine, says its advanced plasma fusion technologies could be used to generate electricity as well as eliminate waste from nuclear power plants. A plant based on its technology would cost less than a conventional nuclear plant. Tri Alpha was founded in 1998 and has raised funds in the past.

Tri Alpha is working on a generator in which hydrogen chases boron, according to literature from UC Irvine. These atoms then form a helium atom, which is placed in a particle accelerator. Slowing down the helium generates electricity.

In the U.S., nuclear energy has been a nuclear topic for decades. The accident at Three Mile Island put the kibosh on further nuclear power plants based on fission techniques, and fusion has always been viewed skeptically.

But it hasn't stopped exploration. Venrock partner (and former nuclear engineer) Ray Rothrock, in an interview last month, said that close to $100 million in Silicon Valley has been invested in fusion concepts over the past several years.