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AMD has moved to quash rumours that the firm is pursuing a license for ARM CPU technology, adding that the Intel rival plans to stick to the x86 architecture for tablet computers.
Speculation first arose following ARM’s appearance at an AMD developer conference which also saw ARM boss Warren East claiming that an AMD ‘rethink’ represented a ‘heightened opportunity’ for ARM to gain AMD as a customer.
However AMD marketing man John Taylor told IDG in an interview that the firm had "made a big bet on APUs" which were based on the x86 architecture.
The firm has been widely considered to be caught on the hop by the emerging tablet category. Management upheaval including the departure of AMD boss Dirk Meyer has been credited by a Wall Street Journal report as a direct consequence of AMD board concerns that not enough was being done to move into emerging categories including smartphones and tablets.
AMD and Intel have both pursued a strategy of combined CPU and graphics technologies which so far has only been successful in traditional categories such as notebooks. That said, AMD’s Fusion in particular has been credited as providing a welcome boost to computing capabilities of low-cost long battery life notebooks.
Meanwhile ARM continues to dominate in smartphones and tablets with the firm recently stating that over 1.1 billion devices had shipped with ARM processor cores.
