AMD to make chips for Android and Chrome powered devices

As PC shipments fall, AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) has announced that it's keen to power Android and Chrome OS devices.

In an interview with PC World during Computex, Taiwan, Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager of global business units at AMD, said that the company is open to expanding OS options as it makes x86 and ARM chips. She also indicated that the company is looking to expand its custom-chip business as Android and Chrome OS offer options for such design integration, although it is still committed to Windows 8.

Earlier, during CES, AMD had said that it was not interested in entering the low-cost tablet market and was confident about Windows 8. Su had said that Windows 8 may be off to a slow start, but would catch on in the future and that AMD was interested in higher-end Windows 8 tablets. She had also said that the company was not interested in powering Android tablets.

According to the new report, AMD did not comment on when AMD-powered Android tablets will make it to the market but it's working with developers on making Android apps compatible with its chips.

AMD has already captured the next generation gaming consoles with its chips powering all three major game systems, the Wii U, Xbox One and Playstation 4.

It's worth pointing out that the majority of Android tablets are powered by chips based on ARM architecture, though Intel has also started focusing on the OS, as manufacturers like Asus and Samsung adopt its chips.

Intel will be launching upgraded Atom chipsets for tablets with the Bay Trail-T SoC (system on chip) in the holiday season. The new quad-core chip features Intel's 22nm low-power Silvermont micro-architecture for tablets which is similar to the manufacturer's new Haswell micro-architecture for computers. The major highlight of the chips is the integrated 4G LTE support. Aimed at tablets, Intel claims that the new 22nm quad-core Atom SoC will deliver twice the CPU and thrice the graphics performance of the current generation of processors. It will also enhance up to eight hours of battery life.

So it looks like PC chip makers Intel and AMD would now compete in the tablets market as more users switch to them in the post-PC era.