Advanced Micro Devices were rumored earlier this week to have stopped working on the development of the ultra low power Bobcat microprocessor. The second largest x86 chip manufacturer denied these rumors on Wednesday. “Bobcat remains under development as an important future core for AMD,” said Damon Muzny, a spokesperson for Advanced Micro Devices.

AMD is working on delivering the Bobcat as a microprocessor able to power up very low power computers, such as netbooks, mobile Internet devices (MIDs) or other consumer electronics (CE). The Bobcat CPU is expected to arrive as a strong competitor to Intel's Atom processor but AMD has not unveiled any official detail on the product yet.

The Sunnyvale chip manufacturer announced recently that it wants to focus on the development of its core products, namely central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs). The company spoke of a so called “asset smart” strategy which includes cutting off the non-core businesses like chips for digital TVs or processors for handsets. Yet, AMD considers the development of Bobcat an important part of its core business, since it is a low-power x86 chip.

The development of this CPU may still go on, but the company said nothing about its availability. When first announced, the processor was said to come during 2008, yet there is still no sign of it and the year nears its end. Perhaps the chip maker should consider speeding things up a little, as the market segment of low-power CPUs is growing fast and might get crowded soon.

AMD announced earlier this month its plans to release two other Athlon processors for low-power products, and they are expected to arrive sometime in October. The current players on the market of ultra-mobile personal computers (UMPCs) are Intel and VIA. Intel's family of Atom processors has recently welcomed another member, the dual-core Atom 330, designed for low-power desktop PCs. VIA announced it plans to release a dual-core Nano chip as well.