AMD: We didn't say anything about Nvidia licensing

Last week, after AMD's conference to reporters last Wednesday updating its roadmap for server CPUs, we reported that the licensing situation for Nvidia and Broadcom chipsets for use in AMD-based servers looked bleak. This afternoon, AMD spokesperson Phil Hughes contacted Betanews to say that the company made no comment with regard to licensing, and continues to make no comment.

"We haven't made any comment with regard to licensing," stated Hughes. He reiterated Server Business Unit Vice President Pat Patla's comment that AMD has only made a decision to go with AMD-branded chipsets for use in motherboards built for new Opteron processors. But when we asked Hughes whether licensing played any role in AMD's decision to only use AMD chipsets and not extend licenses to Nvidia or Broadcom, Hughes repeated that the company has made no comment with regard to licensing, only that it has chosen to use AMD chips for this purpose.

"Our decision to go with AMD chipsets is strictly a business decision," Hughes said.

We listened once again to the webcast, where Patla responded to a question from the audience. The question itself was inaudible, but Chief Marketing Officer Nigel Dessau told Patla, "Let me just repeat the question, it was about Nvidia, their chipset."

Here is how Patla responded entirely: "So for 2010 moving forward, the solutions coming out from AMD will be AMD and on AMD at this time. We don't expect to see new chipsets from Nvidia or Broadcom for server implementations in 2010."

The follow-up was clearer: "But they will continue to support those platforms?" "All existing platforms moving forward through 2010," Patla responded. Indeed, the words "license" and "licensing" were not used in Patla's response.

This afternoon, we reiterated our question to AMD's Hughes: The decision not to license chipsets to Broadcom or Nvidia has nothing to do with licensing? And Hughes reiterated his response, which is that AMD is not commenting on the licensing situation.