Qualcomm Grabs AMD Handheld, Graphics Tech

Qualcomm has picked up handheld assets from Advanced Micro Devices, including graphics chip technology.

San Diego, Calif.-based Qualcomm and Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD announced on Tuesday that Qualcomm has acquired graphics and multimedia technology assets, intellectual property and resources that were "formerly the basis of AMD's handheld business."

The acquisition includes "graphics cores that we have been licensing for several years," said Steve Mollenkopf, executive vice president of Qualcomm and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, in a statement. The agreement provides Qualcomm with "vector graphics and 3D graphics technologies and IP," AMD said in response to an e-mail query.

AMD would not provide further details on what Qualcomm got but said that AMD's handheld graphics is centered on "unified shader architecture" technololgy that has been used in Microsoft's Xbox, for example. "We have not disclosed the specific assets and technologies that Qualcomm has acquired. Our Handheld 3D graphics technology is based on unified shader architecture," the AMD spokesperson said. AMD, however, did make it clear that the agreement does not include its Imageon processors. "The agreement does not include the AMD Imageon processor products, the Imageon brand, or any existing Imageon customer commitments," an AMD representative said.

"AMD will retain rights to the AMD Imageon products," the spokesperson said. "We intend to honor existing customer commitments for the currently available AMD Imageon products, including the A250 application processor and the M180 media processor, for the remaining lifecycle of these products."

AMD added that it will not update the Imageon road map. "We will not add any new AMD Imageon products to the road map," according to the representative. (full Story)