AMD today announced that it has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, under which the Ministry will award a five-year grant of $56.4 million CAD ($52.8M USD) to AMD Canada under Ontario's Next Generation of Jobs Fund. The grant is expected to fund R&D activities by AMD's Markham-based engineers in the development of its upcoming AMD Fusion family of processors, related software infrastructure and integrated computing platforms. Ontario expects to make its initial investment of $11.2 million CAD to AMD upon signing the formal agreement, with periodic payments occurring thereafter throughout the grant period.

In turn, AMD will commit to substantially invest in AMD Fusion processor-related R&D activities in Markham, and retain and create hundreds of high-value R&D jobs during the grant time frame. AMD also plans to increase collaborative activities with local universities.

"With this partnership, Ontario will be at the forefront of helping to bring this game-changing technology to market, and will deepen the province's reputation as a seat of technology innovation," said Dirk Meyer, AMD president and CEO. "AMD Fusion technology is set to enable significant breakthroughs in personal computing and our R&D facility in Markham, Ontario is playing an instrumental role in creating this technology. AMD Canada is a critical part of our global footprint, and a wellspring of our technical innovation."

"Our support will help AMD to revolutionize how we use computers - by creating a new generation of "fusion" processors that will move the computing experience forward in powerful ways," Minister of Economic Development and Trade Sandra Pupatello said. "This project has our government excited, because AMD's innovations will be used in key sectors that we support, such as education, medicine and research."

AMD Fusion is the brand name for the AMD family of Accelerated Processing Units or APUs, a new generation of computing technology that combines the traditional processing power of the CPU with the breakthrough compute power of the GPU. AMD believes the transition to APUs is the next necessary step toward offering users solutions that are designed to deliver a superior experience across a broad range of graphically rich usage scenarios and software applications. AMD's first APU is codenamed "Llano," and systems based on this processor are planned to be available in 1H 2011.

AMD's Canada operations are based in Markham, Ontario. As AMD's largest R&D center outside the United States, AMD Canada employs more than 1,600 people, including an average of 100 engineering student participants in its internship and co-op programs. During the past five years, AMD has invested more than $1 billion dollars in R&D activities in Canada.