AMD has ruled out a love match with ARM despite what the rumour mill is saying.
For the last couple of weeks there has been speculation that AMD had been chasing ARM with a bunch of flowers and a box of chocs, with the idea of scoring a night of passion, an architecture licence or even a buy-out.
The rumours were shot down by Marketing Director John Taylor who told eWeek, that while AMD is not closing the doors on such a deal, it ain't happening.
Taylor admitted that AMD and ARM have a lot of things in common. Neither had a fab, neither thought that the industry can't keep pushing CPU-like cores without sacrificing energy efficiency. Both want to push balanced computing with GPUs to push performance, neither of them like James Blunt.
AMD and ARM have a cunning plan of peddling balanced computing with GPUs to push performance. AMD thinks that the it is time to end the Core wars and get on with efficiency and useful on-die specialised computing functions.
Parallel processing and the ability to multitask is part of the outfit's plans for its Fusion APUs rather than focusing on classic x86 performance.
It claims this is a bit like the end of the frequency wars in which improvements in each generation of CPUs were largely measured by higher clock speeds.
However, some claim the low-power Ontario and Zacate mobile processors are not ready for smartphones and tablets.
The destiny of these products were sealed when Microsoft annouced that windows will support ARM. Why the hell do I need a x86 core then?
It'd be perfect for AMD if they could buy ARM. ARM is going to make a serious dent in Intel business. Not by following it like AMD did, but by creating the most suitable processors to the fastest expanding market, mobile and ultra-mobile gadgets. When windows 8 come out, ARM based notebooks will flourish too. General public has little need for computing power, but they will love the extended battery life.
The question is, do AMD have the money to buy ARM?