On Tuesday Google's Senior VP for Mobile, Andy Rubin, took to the stage here at IDF2011 to announce a continuing partnership with Intel to optimise the Android platform for Intel's processors, and AMD says that's just fine with them.
We caught up with Christopher Sutphen, Product Marketing Manager at AMD, just down the road from Intel's future-looking show in San Francisco to check out it's new tablet offerings.
He was surprisingly positive about the recent Google/Intel announcement.
"We actually see goodness coming out of that announcement," he said. "I don't foresee them putting things in that are going to exclude AMD from that sort of optimisation."
"It's an x86 statement, not necessarily an Intel statement."
With Google optimising the Android platform for Intel processors that means it has to optimise the operating system for the x86 platform as a whole, and AMD is primarily an x86 company.
"It's what we've been doing for 20 years, it's where everything's been optimised and where you're going get the best bang for buck," continued Sutphen.
So as Intel encourages Google to optimise Android for the x86 ecosystem that leaves the door open for AMD-based tablets running Google's OS. And with AMD's APU goodness, with all the GPU and CPU power that entails, it could do some very bad things to Intel's tablet strategy.
"We do see goodness from that sort of partnership, developing that ecosystem," said Sutphen. "As the ecosystem evolves there will be opportunity's for AMD to enter into that space down the road."
With all future versions of Android supporting the x86 architecture there may well be a lot of opportunity for AMD.
