Qualcomm grabs AMD's handheld IP

QUALCOMM, the semiconductor and communications chip designer, said yesterday it has snapped up AMD's handheld business for $65 million, give or take a few bucks.

With this purchase, Qualcomm is looking at improving multimedia performance on their SoC designs and, although the PR is information-lite, AMD's Xilleon chips are the object of the deal, here. These chips can enable advanced graphics and DTV on a number of low-power, low-profile devices. Qualcomm continues to license the use of Imageon chips from AMD.

AMD's handheld division has been stuck in neutral for the last 18 months and with no plans within the "new" AMD, it seems like an all-round win-win situation for the two companies. Qualcomm will be picking up an undisclosed number of AMD engineers from this sale.

As an ARM partner, Qualcomm already has the CPU designs to power devices and, considering the nature of the IP it just bought, it now seems poised to deploy its own Tegra-like SoC solution.

Maybe that rumoured ARM netbook isn't that far off. µ