How soon will AMD start to make ARM processors?

AMD’s spin-off GlobalFoundries is already a major player in making ARM processors for Qualcomm, Broadcomm, STMicroelectronics and more. Now there are some talks about AMD considering to launch an ARM processor:

Speaking to EE Times during a discussion of ARM’s first quarter financial results CEO Warren East said: “AMD is a successful company selling microprocessors. ARM is in the business of licensing microprocessor designs. It is perfectly natural that we should have been trying to sell microprocessor designs to AMD for about the last ten years. Hitherto we haven’t been successful.”

East also said: “AMD has signaled they are going through a rethink of their strategy, and that must provide a heightened opportunity for ARM. They might use ARM microprocessors in the future and you’ve got to expect that we would be trying to persuade them of that.”

“ATI was actually an ARM licensee for some of its work in mobile applications so AMD did technically become an ARM licensee.” Qualcomm then bought the mobile graphics division from AMD for $65 million.

If negotiations were starting today they would probably focus on ARM’s forthcoming Cortex-A15 multicore-capable processor core. But East declined to rule out the possibility of licensing Cortex-A8 or Cortex-A9 to AMD.

Jem Davies, VP of Technology for ARM Holdings (who I video interviewed at ARM Techcon about the Mali-T604) will host a keynote at the upcoming AMD Fusion ’11 Summit in June 13-16th in Bellevue, Washington. He will likely discuss the future of heterogeneous computing, which is becoming a hot word from the world of supercomputing (GPGPU, GPU Computing) to the world of ultra-low power devices that are relying on System-On-a-Chip silicon (SOC), such as smartphones and tablets.

Source: eetimes.com and brightsideofnews.com

How soon do you think AMD will officially announce that they will make ARM processors and what do you think they will be? Post your thoughts in the comments.