AMD to Challenge NVIDIA With Android Support
Things are getting very interesting in the Android chipset game. One of the desktop’s biggest GPU providers – NVIDIA – has already made their way into several Android phones, tablets, and soon-to-be netbooks (hybrid or otherwise), and now their biggest desktop competitor – AMD – looks to join them.
They’re said to be recruiting engineers to create chipset drivers for Android. Starting out, their focus will likely be getting their mobile chipset into the tablets and netbooks of today’s top OEMs, but that doesn’t mean they won’t eventually end up in phones.
AMD joins a long list of other vendors next to NVIDIA, too – Samsung, Qualcomm and Texas instruments are all established players in this market, and even Intel is working on their own Android-ready chipset. (Though their plans seem to be much more pedestrian than those of their competitors.)
It wasn’t said who they’d be shopping their chipset to when and if they are available, but if it’s anything like NVIDIA’s story then we could see a wide range of OEMs adopting the technology for a fresh piece of technology to run tomorrow’s Android devices. (Samsung forwent their own dual-core processor for Tegra 2 in their tablets and even certain versions of the Samsung Galaxy S 2.)
Unfortunately, we don’t know when “tomorrow” actually is for AMD. NVIDIA has gotten a huge head-start in the high-performance chipset market and will likely be the de-facto offering for OEMs who want to provide dual-core devices in 2011. AMD has a lot of ground to make up if they want to catch up, but I’m certain they’ll be able to manage just as they have on the desktop side of things. [via DigiTimes]