AMD lets go of its old mindset

Mercury News recently published an article about AMD's financial state over here. The article quotes AMD spokesman Mike Silverman, who reveals AMD needs to let go of the old "AMD vs Intel" mindset because the future won't be about that anymore:

"We're at an inflection point," said company spokesman Mike Silverman. "We will all need to let go of the old 'AMD versus Intel' mind-set, because it won't be about that anymore."

Although AMD has been vague about its plans, the company is widely expected to push hard to get its chips into smartphones and tablets. Those markets not only are dominated by other companies, but its gargantuan archrival is trying to elbow its way into them, too -- potentially moving the war with Intel onto a new battleground.

This quote was blown out of proportion by some media who saw this quote as evidence that AMD may pull out of the x86 market, so the company gave additional clarification to ExtremeTech:

This single quote has been spun by other publications into speculation that AMD intends to launch ARM CPUs either alongside its x86 chips or as wholesale replacements for them. When we contacted Silverman, he confirmed that the original statement has been taken somewhat out of context and provided additional clarification. “AMD is a leader in x86 microprocessor design, and we remain committed to the x86 market,” Silverman told us. “Our strategy is to accelerate our growth by taking advantage of our design capabilities to deliver a breadth of products that best align with broader industry shifts toward low power, emerging markets and the cloud.”

The larger truth behind Silverman’s statement is that no matter what AMD does, it’s not going to be “AMD versus Intel” anymore. ARM plans to push into netbooks and servers, while Intel has plans for tablets and smartphones. In the future, AMD will be crossing swords with the likes of Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Nvidia (in CPUs), and Intel.