Watch out for flying pigs
If any further evidence were needed of the paradigm-shattering influence of the mobile Internet revolution this, surely, is it. Even a year ago we couldn't have imagined we'd be saying this, but AMD and Intel are collaborating over the MeeGo open source mobile OS project.
AMD and Intel have been bitter rivals for decades, characterised by recriminations, accusations and litigation, but all that seems to have been forgotten as both companies are apparently more frightened of the likes of Qualcomm than they are each other. At the MeeGo conference 2010, AMD announced it was joining the party.
"MeeGo represents an exciting, open-source mobile operating system we expect to be adopted by mobile and embedded device makers over time," said Ben Bar-Haim, VP of software development at AMD. "We are glad to provide engineering resources to joint industry efforts like MeeGo and expect that this operating system will help drive our embedded plans and create expanded market opportunities for our forthcoming Accelerated Processing Units."
This move makes sense for AMD. It's playing a wait-and-see game with the mobile Internet market right now, reasoning that it should prioritise taking notebook share away from Intel before it gets all excited about tablets.
But the forthcoming APUs promise to offer powerful computing and graphics at lower power envelopes than ever and are bound to be considered for embedded uses too. Joining this embedded OS project at an early stage means AMD should avoid being left behind when that happens.
Conversely this looks like a bad move for Intel. It's got problems enough trying to take on the likes of Qualcomm in the handheld market without AMD grabbing a bunch of market share away from Atom, which it surely intends to do. Surely Intel would rather not have its arch rival able to gain the benefits of the OS it is investing heavily in, alongside Nokia. Maybe the fact that it's Linux-based - and thus open source - and the need for Intel to demonstrate it's playing nice with AMD, forced the chip giant's hand.
