Qualcomm has acquired AMD's handheld chip business for
around $65m (£47m) to enhance its multimedia chip
capabilities.
"This acquisition of assets from AMD's handheld business brings
us strong multimedia technologies, including graphics cores that we
have been licensing for several years," said Steve Mollenkopf,
executive vice-president of Qualcomm and president of Qualcomm CDMA
(3G) Technologies.
"Bringing this technology in-house creates even greater synergy
as we seamlessly integrate the best-in-class multimedia performance
AMD offers into our
system-on-chip
(SoC) products."
Robert J Rivet, chief operations and administrative officer and
chief financial officer of AMD, said, "With the sale of these
handheld technology assets and resources to Qualcomm, we are better
able to focus on our core business and leverage our unique position
as a leader in both x86 computing and high-end graphics.
"We believe the talented AMD Handheld employees will be a great
asset to Qualcomm."
Under the terms of the agreement,
Qualcomm has extended offers
of employment to various design and development teams from AMD's
handheld business.
The teams are developing technologies to enhance mobile devices
in areas including 2D and 3D graphics, audio/video, display, and
architecture.
Earlier this week, loss-making AMD said it would be making
another 1,100 staff redundant.