Tuesday, April 9, 2002
AMD to enter PDA chip market
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "HARDWARE" @ 04:05 PM
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/24758.html
Ok, we've received eleventy-two emails on this at last count, so we figured we'd better post on this. "AMD today launched a new chip, the first fruits of its recent takeover of Alchemy Semiconductor, and its first foray into the low-power PDA and information appliance CPU market. This is the Alchemy AU 1100: it runs on a MIPS32 instruction set."
MIPS? So, what PDA uses MIPS? If AMD wants to gain significant marketshare inthe PDA market like they have on the desktop, they would have to do it the same way, emulating the king of PDA chips, which is the ARM core that Pocket PC's and Palm's OS5 will be using. MIPS is being almost completely abandoned by PDA makers, save the Casio BE-300, and Casio has an ownership stake in the company they buy their chips from, so they won't be using AMD either.
I suspect their market will be more vertical, or proprietary like the BE-300. And the marketshare of the BE-300 is so small, I am not sure that is a business model I'd chase after.
If AMD wants to go after consumers and corporate IT departments, they are going to have to support Palm or Pocket PC, and that means ARM.
Ok, we've received eleventy-two emails on this at last count, so we figured we'd better post on this. "AMD today launched a new chip, the first fruits of its recent takeover of Alchemy Semiconductor, and its first foray into the low-power PDA and information appliance CPU market. This is the Alchemy AU 1100: it runs on a MIPS32 instruction set."
MIPS? So, what PDA uses MIPS? If AMD wants to gain significant marketshare inthe PDA market like they have on the desktop, they would have to do it the same way, emulating the king of PDA chips, which is the ARM core that Pocket PC's and Palm's OS5 will be using. MIPS is being almost completely abandoned by PDA makers, save the Casio BE-300, and Casio has an ownership stake in the company they buy their chips from, so they won't be using AMD either.
I suspect their market will be more vertical, or proprietary like the BE-300. And the marketshare of the BE-300 is so small, I am not sure that is a business model I'd chase after.
If AMD wants to go after consumers and corporate IT departments, they are going to have to support Palm or Pocket PC, and that means ARM.
