Market research firm Mercury Research says AMD (NYSE: AMD) saw its share of the global x86 microprocessor market jump to 19.4 percent in Q2 from 18.2 percent in Q1 and just 17.8 percent in Q2 of 2010. According to Mercury, the good showing can be attributed to AMD's Fusion chips. First demonstrated at Computex 2010, the Fusion microprocessor is an accelerated processing unit which combines traditional CPU capabilities with GPU on the same silicon.

Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research says that the popularity of Fusion chips has an effect on Intel's (NASDAQ: INTC) market share across its range of processors based on the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture launched in Q1 this year. McCarron said in a statement: "Together these devices allowed AMD to increase shipments in the mobile market by 10 percent, and enabled the company to out-ship the competition and gain market share in the second quarter."

According to a report on PCWorld, PC makers such as Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) and Toshiba have launched many laptops based on AMD's Fusion chip, with HP announcing 11 new laptops alone in June. Indeed, AMD's CFO and acting CEO Thomas Seifert noted in a conference call with analysts and journalists last week that the success of its APUs demonstrates that the company has hit on the right strategy.

For more:
- check out this article at eWeek
- check out this article at PCWorld

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