AMD targets handheld chip market

AMD has set up a business arm to develop graphics technologies that can be licensed to other semiconductor manufacturers across the handheld industry. 

The chip firm said that the move followed a growing demand for visually compelling content on handheld devices, which requires rich graphics and 3D hardware acceleration.

The AMD intellectual property licensing initiative brings together the company's engineering skills, graphics technology and application developer and publisher support.

"As part of AMD's aim to provide an advanced visual experience across all devices, new handheld devices developed with AMD graphics technology inside will contain stunning user interfaces, immersive 3D games and dynamic multimedia content," a spokeswoman told vnunet.com.

AMD predicted that the market for handheld devices would reach more than a billion units worldwide in 2007.

"AMD has been developing graphics technology for PCs and video game consoles for more than 20 years, and has shipped more than 200 million processors for mobile phones," said Paul Dal Santo, vice president and general manager of AMD's handheld division.

"This uniquely qualifies AMD to work with OEMs and other semiconductor suppliers to bring handheld devices to market."

ST Microelectronics has already licensed AMD graphics technology, including 2D, 3D and vector graphics core engines, as well as related software compliant with the OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenVG 1.0 standards. 

"Our extensive benchmarking research found that AMD delivers the highest quality graphics technology for handheld user interfaces and sophisticated applications such as GPS," said Jyrki Hannikainen, general manager of ST Microelectronics' application processor division.

See also:

Sony ditches chip spending

Company may outsource production to cut future costs  15 Feb 2007

Microsoft eyes Mobile Windows Vista

Windows Mobile 6 takes on the look and functionality of Vista  09 Feb 2007

NEC cuts mobile losses

Sale of European PC division hits revenues  07 Feb 2007

Chip and pin vulnerable to relay attack

Tetris hackers strike again  07 Feb 2007

Chip designers turn to India

Integrated circuit design on the subcontinent growing at 20 per cent per year  05 Feb 2007

Mobile services revenue set to soar

But SMS still provides the bread and butter  02 Feb 2007

Windows Vista drives memory chip surge

But intense competition to push prices down 30 per cent this year  23 Jan 2007

HP boffin promises chip revolution

Shrinking the size of transistors is no longer relevant, claims HP Senior Fellow  16 Jan 2007

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