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AMD dissolves Alchemy product line

Chipmaker also plans investment in Raza Microelectronics, the company picking up its handheld processors.

Tom Krazit Former Staff writer, CNET News
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Tom Krazit
Advanced Micro Devices unloaded its Alchemy line of microprocessors on Tuesday, selling the product to Raza Microelectronics.

Rumors about the impending move were in circulation a few weeks ago, prior to AMD's analyst meeting. The Alchemy processors are designed for low-power devices such as handhelds or portable media players. The products never made a huge splash and complicated the company's product lineup with their use of the MIPS instruction set.

Software written for x86 can't run on chips that use the MIPS instruction set, and vice versa. AMD CEO Hector Ruiz has spoken many times of the company's need for an "x86 Everywhere" strategy, referring to the instruction set that provides the marching orders for its chips, as well as Intel's.

Financial terms of the deal with Raza were not disclosed. But AMD plans to invest in Raza as part of a new strategic relationship, the companies said in a statement. Raza is a MIPS shop already, with processors for networking and security applications. The company hopes the Alchemy processors will allow it to gain a share of the consumer market, Raza said in a statement.

The companies also announced plans to work together on projects such as AMD's Torrenza initiative announced two weeks ago at its analyst meeting. Torrenza is a bid to open up AMD's Opteron processors to accommodate third-party coprocessors for specialized workloads.