AMD Not Looking to Wrestle ARM (Maybe Later)
AMD staying out of the smartphone chip war, for now.
The smartphone CPU market is one of the fastest growing in the industry, but AMD with all its processor expertise doesn't seem interested in targeting that segment just yet.
AMD CEO Dirk Meyer was asked by Fortune Magazine if the company will compete with ARM.
Meyer replied, "I don't foresee that day coming in the near term, and I'll tell you why. First of all, when we consider which areas to approach, we look at markets, we look at the technology capabilities we have, and we try to find an intersection point that really represents really big opportunities. As I've said, by far the biggest business opportunity we've got is in PCs and servers.
"The market for silicon processing content is bigger than the smartphone market and is going to grow, in revenue terms, frankly faster than the smartphone market. And the other thing we really like about our core market is that there aren't that many competitors versus the cell phone market, where you've got Qualcomm is the big guy, Broadcom getting into the business and a lot of other incumbents that are already scrambling for shares. I'd rather focus on the big market, where there's a small number of competitors."
The main competitors against AMD are Intel and Nvidia. Both Intel and Nvidia are already going after the smartphone market, with the latter pushing its Tegra technology and the former adapting its Atom for smartphone applications. In fact, Intel has already started efforts to make its x86 offering competitive on a power consumption level against the ARM CPUs.
That doesn’t mean, however, that AMD is going to ignore the smartphone market.
"Having said that, I don't think we can ignore in the long term what's going on with mobility, the fact that people's eyeballs are spending more time in front of things like tablets and smartphones," Meyer added. "And we are ensuring that we are developing the technology that will, over time, address these markets. It's not a 'not-ever,' it's just a 'not now' statement."
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- smartphones ,
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Seems a lot of companies are mistaking the Wave of smartphones for a Mountain and now it appears AMD aren't buying it. Good on you AMD
I actually see this as a good thing. With AMD's current position in CPU/GPU market, they actually should focus on the area that they have their expertise in and not to waste resources on many small things at a time.
Focusing resources only on a certain area of expertise may provide a real benefit in a long run in server/PC markets.
It's particularly good for them if stating a position of non-competition for that market encourages ARM to work in collaboration with them in some way (although I've no idea if ARM would be interested in adding AMD's graphics etc into a bundle etc)
@swamprat: Hmm, interesing idea. Maybe ARM-FP in a mobile device?
This isnt really about mobile chips. The fact is that very soon ARM's chips will be able to handle most of the everday computing that folks do.
Folks wont need Intel and AMDs "big ol' boys" x86 chips to do what they need to do. A $10 ARM chip will take care of it and be mobile into the bargain too.
That is a huge worry for Intel/AMD.
The x86 is looking even more tired as each month goes by.