AMD Steps Up in Support of Android and Chrome

Although AMD said in January that it was diving in strong with Windows 8 and was not interested in making chips for Android devices, senior vice president and general manager of global business units at AMD Lisa Su told PCWorld that the company may shift some of its focus to building chips for Google’s two operating systems and is in fact working with developers on Android apps for AMD processors.

"We are very committed to Windows 8; we think it's a great operating system, but we also see a market for Android and Chrome developing as well," she said.

AMD Kabini
Kabini-based AMD A6-Series APU

It’s not hard to imagine why AMD would consider making chips for Android and Chrome OS devices. For one thing, the mobile market is exploding, so why not build for more mobile devices? AMD already has mobile chips with its Kabini and Temash APUs, so it doesn’t seem to be much of a stretch to support Chrome OS and Android on touch notebooks and tablets.

Further, Windows 8 adoption has been lukewarm, so AMD is likely spending less time counting its money from sales of Windows 8 devices and more time finding new ways to open up revenue streams.

Maybe AMD can get in cahoots with the folks behind the Android-x86 project, who are trying to port Android over to x86 devices. It seems they’d have much to talk about.