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Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) will license technology from rival chip developer ARM in an effort to thwart Intel’s Ultrabook crusade.
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Specifically AMD will be licensing an ARM-based processor dedicated to security management, offering features that’ll safeguard online transactions in ‘superthin’ notebooks and other mobile devices from 2013.
This includes mobile banking, antivirus operations and even the thwarting of online piracy through digital rights management.
This processor will sit alongside AMD’s x86-based-CPU and GPU technology. Approved software alone will run on the extra core to ensure malware and other malicious software doesn’t interrupt processes.
“It runs the code in a very isolated environment that is well protected from the bigger x86 environment,” AMD’s chief information officer, Mike Wolfe, told the BBC.
“Security is all a complexity argument. What you want to do is reduce the amount of code that a security function depends on because every 1,000 lines of code or so has a bug in it. Clearly when you are running hundreds of millions of lines of code the probability of having a bug is pretty high.
“So by reducing that environment and restricting the functions to well-defined properties you are reducing a lot of that risk.”
The move is being tipped by analysts as the beginning of an important relationship, including Sergis Mushell, principal research analyst at tech consultancy firm Gartner.
“Think about the number of smartphones and tablet devices out there,” begun Mushell. “If their apps are going to use a certain methodology to do transactions, then having the same security technology built into PCs makes sense.
“For AMD this is about leveraging what is out there rather than trying to invent every part of the wheel.”
The new superthin notebooks will compete against Intel’s iteration: Ultrabooks.
The announcement was made at AMD’s Fusion Developer Summit held in Seattle.
