AMD and ARM Pact Not So Unlikely After All

It looks like all those rumors about ARM and Advanced Micro Devices possibly joining forces in some form or another may be more than baseless speculation, or so a recent report seems to suggest.

Advanced Micro Devices may have managed to get its Fusion mobile APUs inside a number of laptops and tablets, but ARM platforms still dominate the latter area.

This isn't really that great a surprise for now, since a real fight will probably only start between x86 and ARM once Intel's Medfield shows up.

On the flip side, it is quite possible that Advanced Micro Devices won't fight with ARM at all, the two reportedly considering a collaboration.

More specifically, somehow combining the benefits of both Fusion chips and ARM models isn't impossible.

As such, the two could, in the near future, begin to jointly develop a common on-chip interface and interconnect.

"You can take a Bobcat chip, yank the GPU, and slap a Mali or Imagination block in," stated Charlie Demerjian.

"Want a quad-core A15 that runs ATI demos? A shoelace tip controller that bootstraps a 6970? [Or] how about a Bulldozer or Trinity that uses that custom accelerator block that Google or Facebook is probably working on? No problem."



Should a cooperation of this kind truly be set up, AMD and ARM could make strong chips, both computing and graphics-wise, with high portability level.

"This is a non-negotiable point, it must not just be in place, it needs to be in place long long before you expect to talk to customers and partners, much less expect silicon on the market. 
”

Still, while the ARM cores and IP are the part more easy to approach, the x86 AMD cores could be harder to deal with.

"You can make them [ARM cores] just about anywhere, and you can make them with a lot of different tools. You can't do this with AMD CPUs, they are just the opposite, right?"