A new article from AMD published in the “Embedded Control Europe” magazine called “Combining Hardware and Software for Advanced Embedded Graphics” seems to lobby a round soundly in the direction of Nvidia’s Tegra with statements like this:
Developers no longer need to spend so much time optimizing code to fit into small solid-state storage devices. Even handheld-sized embedded devices with low-power processors can operate a fully-fledged Windows 7 operating system. Thus, fully featured x86 computers can more easily adapt to fit the shape and size requirements of the embedded applications, lending themselves to becoming truly embedded and ubiquitous devices.
It may not be immediately obvious to read it, but there’s a strong underlying subtext here: Use AMD technology and you can run your existing Windows applications on mobile devices, instead of rewriting/recompiling them for Apple’s IOS or a Tegra-based device (Based on ARM). This is a big win for developers who can recycle their existing code and development strategies, but one has to wonder: Will anyone really want to run Windows7 on a mobile device? Apple kinda reinvented the mobile-device market by abandoning most of the desktop paradigms for a completely new experience. Games like ‘Trism’ and Apps like ‘Google Goggles’ aren’t really suited well for desktop environments, how would they work in a Desktop Environment shrunken down to Mobile size?
Get the paper here (3 page PDF), or read it online.
Update: And if you really are serious about embedded development, you can try out AMD’s High Performance Embedded Graphics Reference Design Kit: An AMD A3 Processor combined with a Radeon E4960, 1GB Ethernet, and 2 HDMI, 2USB, and 2 SATA ports.
