AMD May Partner with ARM After All, Eventually

AMD has said in the past, several times, that it is fully committed to x86, but this no longer seems to mean that a partnership with ARM is totally impossible. 

Advanced Micro Devices has always been a rival to Intel on the market for central processing units based on the x86 architecture. 

However, the ARM architecture has been advancing and gaining popularity rapidly, enough so that AMD may be reconsidering previous commitments. 

Granted, “reconsidering” may be laying it a bit thick, since starting to make ARM chips doesn't mean AMD will be any less active in its x86 research and development. 

Still, where there used to be certainty that AMD would not start to use the ARM architecture, there is now ambiguity. 

AMD's new Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster was asked to answer whether there would ever be an alliance with ARM Holdings, or at least the possibility. 

The response was a deliberately vague “The answer is not no,” according to Wired. 

Given the recent revelations, the ones during AMD's Financial Analyst Day, it is fairly easy to understand why the Sunnyvale, California-based company is keeping that option open. 

Though a deal with a major supplier of consumer electronics may already be in place, the company has basically stated that its high-end CPU line will be taking a break next year. 

There is also the matter of Windows 8 supporting the ARM architecture, something that Intel itself will need to keep a careful watch over. 

All in all, compared to Intel's attempts at infiltrating the phone and tablet sector, ARM has arguably performed better in extending from the mobile market into the PC segment. Thus, a pact between ARM and AMD is not outside the realm of probability. 

On a related note, since it will take a while for anything more to become clear on this matter, readers may want to divert their attention to AMD's accelerated APU and laptop plans.

Posted in: Hardware, News, Preview