We like to keep abreast of whispers and rumors concerning what could be happening next in the realm of gaming here at Wii U Daily, so Devinder Kumar, the CFO of AMD has made some interesting statements in regards to the direction his company will be taking over the next few years. Currently, all three current-gen consoles use AMD graphics chips, so when the company lauds several new products that are up and coming, we stand up and take notice.
According to Kumar, the team is currently working on an x86 and an ARM chip. If you’re unfamiliar with those terms, x86 is the standard for home computers and more recently, home consoles since the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 adopted the architecture. ARM is used more in the mobile space, but the Wii U does feature an ARM processor. Either way, the hints that Kumar drops seems to relate these new products from AMD to a gaming console company.
The other thing I’ll mention in the semi-custom business which you probably picked up in the announcement that we had in October earnings call is we’ve been having a lot of interest in the semi-custom business, the semi-custom business is very unique, whereby it takes AMD’s core IP, we use it across market segments, across customers, across products, customer interest has been high and we projected earlier this year that we would have at least one to two semi-custom design wins and I’m pleased to report that we have those design wins, the work to design the products that has already started, the contract assigned and those parts get introduced in 2016.
We didn’t say at which space it is in. I’m not going to give too much detail. I’ll say that one is x86 and one is ARM, and atleast one will be on gaming, right. But that’s about as much as you going to get out me today, because the customers from the standpoint to be fair to them. It is their product. They launch it. They announce it and then just like the game console or the parts you find out that its AMD’s APU that’s been used in those products.
We know Nintendo is hard at work on their Quality of Life platform, but it’s possible this information could be the first hints of its new gaming console, as well. What do you think?
